The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813-1859 9780197609705, 9780197609682

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The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859

OXFORD STUDIES IN MUSIC THEORY Series Editor Steven Rings Studies in Music with Text, David Lewin Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787–​1791, Danuta Mirka Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied, Yonatan Malin A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice, Dmitri Tymoczko In the Process of Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-​Century Music, Janet Schmalfeldt Tonality and Transformation, Steven Rings Audacious Euphony: Chromatic Harmony and the Triad's Second Nature, Richard Cohn Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music, Kofi Agawu Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era, Roger Mathew Grant Mahler’s Symphonic Sonatas, Seth Monahan Pieces of Tradition: An Analysis of Contemporary Tonal Music, Daniel Harrison Music at Hand: Instruments, Bodies, and Cognition, Jonathan De Souza Foundations of Musical Grammar, Lawrence M. Zbikowski Organized Time: Rhythm, Tonality, and Form, Jason Yust Flow: The Rhythmic Voice in Rap Music, Mitchell Ohriner Performing Knowledge: Twentieth-​Century Music in Analysis and Performance, Daphne Leong Enacting Musical Time: The Bodily Experience of New Music, Mariusz Kozak Hearing Homophony: Tonal Expectation at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century, Megan Kaes Long Form as Harmony in Rock Music, Drew Nobile Desire in Chromatic Harmony: A Psychodynamic Exploration of Fin de Siècle Tonality, Kenneth M. Smith A Blaze of Light in Every Word: Analyzing the Popular Singing Voice, Victoria Malewy Sweet Thing: The History and Musical Structure of a Shared American Vernacular Form, Nicholas Stoia Hypermetric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787–​1791, Danuta Mirka How Sonata Forms: A Bottom-​Up Approach to Musical Form, Yoel Greenberg Exploring Musical Spaces: A Synthesis of Mathematical Approaches, Julian Hook The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859, William Rothstein

The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859 Wi l li am R ot hstein

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–​0–​19–​760968–​2 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America The publisher gratefully acknowledges support from the General Fund of the American Musicological Society, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

To the memory of Joseph Rothstein (1919–​1992)

CONTENTS

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: What Is There to Analyze? PART I:  LA VIA ITALIANA 1. The Anvil Chorus 2. Theoretical Contexts I: Nineteenth-​Century Theory Italian Theory: An Overview Theories of Harmony, 1800–​1840 Theories of Rhythm, 1800–​1840 Midcentury Theorists Theories of Harmony, 1840–​1860 Theories of Rhythm, 1840–​1860 Conclusion 3. Theoretical Contexts II: Schenker and Riemann Heinrich in Italy Riemann, Paleo-​and Neo-​ 4. Rhythm and Meter Poetic Meters and Their Musical Settings Four-​Cycles Rossini Verdi 5. Musical Form Symmetry Rossini and Repetition Lyric Form Multi-​Movement Forms

xi xxiii 1 9 11 25 25 30 33 45 45 57 62 64 64 80 87 88 96 111 126 142 142 144 149 172

viii  T  Contents PART II:  ROSSINI 6. Rossini’s Mediants Diatonic Mediants The Mediant Key in Major (iiiT) The Submediant Key in Major (viT) Chromatic Mediants Chromatic Mediants on a Large Scale Chromatic Miracles in Mosè in Egitto Chromatic Stupefaction in Il barbiere Summary of Mediant Relations 7. Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas Semiramide, Finale primo Tonal Coherence in La donna del lago Pathways through Otello, Act 3 Fusion of Numbers 8.  Guillaume Tell Rossini in Paris Overture and Act 1 Act 2 Act 3 Act 4

185 187 187 190 193 196 199 200 204 216 218 218 230 238 245 259 259 264 273 281 284

PART III:  BETWEEN ROSSINI AND VERDI 289 9. Bellini and the New Diatonicism 291 Textual Issues 292 Recitative and Scena 295 Characteristic Foreground Techniques 296 Supplenti 304 Local Techniques with Large-​Scale Consequences 304 Long-​Range Linearity: The Scena of the Adalgisa–​Pollione Duet 315 Tonal Pairing: The End of La straniera 318 Tonality and Sonorità: The End of Norma 322 10. Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism 334 11. Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti 371 Mercadante’s Operas, 1837–​1840 372 Il giuramento, Act 3 383 Donizetti’s Operas, 1838–​1843 385 La favorite, Act 4 386 The End of Maria di Rohan 397

Contents  T  ix PART IV:  VERDI’S SEDICI ANNI Verdi’s Chiaroscuro Gisi and Verdian Tonality 12.  Ernani to Attila (1844–​1846) Ernani Giovanna d’Arco, Act 3 Attila, Prologue 13.  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–​1853) Verdi and Meyerbeer Rigoletto and Il trovatore Compared Some Aspects of Rigoletto Tonality in Rigoletto: Static or Kinetic, Ontic or Gignetic? Tonality in Il trovatore Analysis of Il trovatore, No. 3 (Scena, Romanza, e Terzetto) 14.  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–​1859) Les vêpres siciliennes, Act 2 Simon Boccanegra (1857), Prologue Lyric Form in Simon Boccanegra Boccanegra, Ballo, and the Diminished Seventh Un ballo in maschera, Act 2 Afterword: Verdi and his Predecessors Selected Bibliography Index of Names and Works General Index

403 403 407 411 411 433 441 448 448 451 460 475 486 493 501 501 513 520 527 535 549 555 561 569

P R E FAC E

At the end of his life, Gioachino Rossini stated his artistic credo: “Do not forget, O Cultured Public and Glorious Garrison, that pleasure must be the foundation and purpose of [musical] art.”1 Dear reader: The book that you hold in your hands, whether literal or virtual, is a long and eccentric thank-​you letter to Rossini and his successors for decades of pleasure given. That the book is long is obvious. That it is eccentric is simply explained: I am a music theorist. This is a book on opera written from a deliberately one-​sided perspective, that of music analysis. Opera is by definition a composite art; successful operas have been those that combine memorable music with compelling dramatic situations and at least serviceable texts. Yet it is only a small exaggeration to claim, as Harold Powers did with reference to Verdi, that “[t]‌he drama is the scaffold, but once the construction is finished, the building that remains is the music. The opera is not in fact ‘musical drama,’ but ‘theatrical music.’ ”2 The degree to which Powers’s claim holds true is not the same for each composer of opera, nor for every opera by a single composer. And Powers implies, much as Richard Wagner did before him, that an important distinction must be made between theatrical and non-​theatrical music. Nevertheless, this book will treat nineteenth-​century operas to analyses that, a generation ago, might have been called “purely musical.” (Nowadays we understand that music is never “pure.”) Many readers will feel, throughout this book, that I am shortchanging everything about opera except the music, and even there that I am privileging a few aspects, especially harmony, over others that may be equally impactful in performance. To this charge I plead guilty in advance. Why write such a narrowly focused book? There are several reasons, some more principled than others. The least principled is that I wanted to write it. 1 Letter to Lauro Rossi, 28 June 1868; in Giuseppe Mazzatini, Fanny Manis, and Giovanni Manis, eds., Lettere di G. Rossini (Florence, 1902), 327. “[N]‌on dimentichi il Colto Pubblico e Inclita Guarnigione, che il Diletto deve essere la base e lo scopo di quest’ arte.” Il Colto Pubblico e Inclita Guarnigione is a mock-​serious expression of obeisance to the public, in use from at least the 1820s and still in use today. Each Italian town had a military garrison, and a section of each theater was reserved for them. I thank Giorgio Sanguinetti for insight into this expression. 2 Harold S. Powers, “Il ‘do del baritono’ nel ‘gioco delle parti’ verdiano,” Opera e libretto II (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 267–​81; 276. Translation by Powers in “ ‘La dama velata’: Act II of Un ballo in maschera,” in Verdi’s Middle Period, ed. Martin Chusid (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 273–​336; 293n.

xii  T  Preface Another is that the analysis of operatic music has fallen upon hard times, and I wish to revive it. In the decades since Joseph Kerman’s takedown of Siegmund Levarie’s hyper-​structuralist essay “Key Relations in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera,” the pendulum has swung far in the direction opposite to Levarie’s. As pendulums will do, this one did not stop at Kerman’s own position, which was less hostile to analysis than it may have seemed. After the early 1990s, analytical studies of opera became increasingly rare in English-​language scholarship, even in journals where one might have expected to find them, such as Cambridge Opera Journal and 19th-​ Century Music.3 Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker veered from their coedited collection Analyzing Opera (1989) to their coauthored History of Opera (2012), from which musical examples were banned as favoring “opera as text” over “opera as event.” While a few doughty souls, including Powers, continued to analyze operatic music past the turn of the millennium, the Martian musicologist first conjured by Richard Taruskin in the 1980s might have concluded, following a return visit to the music library, that music is the least important component of the operatic art, one readily taken for granted and unworthy of detailed study. With all-​too-​rare exceptions, card-​carrying music theorists have continued to ignore opera unless the operas in question have been by Mozart, Wagner, or a post-​tonal composer, preferably German. In this they have followed the still more operaphobic, and Germanophilic, example of Heinrich Schenker, who enjoyed certain operas very much but disapproved of opera in principle.4 With astonishingly rare exceptions, the brief efflorescence of opera analysis that peaked in the 1980s was produced by scholars who identified professionally with historical musicology, not music theory.5 I also wrote this book to correct the view of music history that is tacitly held within the North American music-​theory community, by which I mean holders of the PhD on or within sight of the tenure track in universities located in the United States and Canada. (Henceforth I replace this cumbersome description with the briefer, if less precise, “American theory” and “American theorists.”) Most accounts by American theorists of eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​ century music have overlooked opera to a degree that I have come to find distressing. Music composed for dramatic purposes—​ Powers’s “theatrical music”—​ has usually preceded instrumental music in the introduction of new musical resources (to borrow a phrase from Henry Cowell). It is not surprising that this should be so. Opera traffics in extreme emotions; to portray extreme emotions, extreme musical means are called upon; where such means have not existed, composers have invented them. Since the beginnings of opera, composers’ technical and expressive armory has been stocked with gear test-​driven in the opera house. This is true not only in 3 In a 2002 issue of Cambridge Opera Journal devoted to Verdi, Mary Ann Smart wrote that “those Schenker graphs of arias and ensembles now read as quaint artefacts of a long-​gone era.” Smart, “Primal Scenes: Verdi in Analysis,” Cambridge Opera Journal 14: 1–​9; 3. 4 Schenker’s attitude toward opera was relatively liberal in the 1890s, when he wrote music criticism for the Viennese press, but it hardened after 1900. I discuss this issue in ­chapter 3. 5 See the discussion of this point in the Introduction to Steven Huebner, Les opéras de Verdi (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2017), a book that I encountered after most of the present book was written.

Preface  T  xiii fairly obvious areas such as instrumentation and declamatory style, but also in harmony and musical form. The work of Charles Rosen and Daniel Heartz should have convinced even the most operaphobic theorist that, for the history of eighteenth-​century sonata forms, arias are more relevant than allemandes. Yet, judging by the programs of theory conferences and the contents of theory journals, the news from the opera house has barely been heard—​except, as always, where Wagner is concerned. I wish to nudge American theory away from the extreme Germanocentrism that has undergirded it since the 1930s, when German-​speaking scholar-​musicians arrived on American shores in significant numbers. The Nazi era proved to be the making of American theory (and the unmaking of German theory, as Ludwig Holtmeier has shown6). If the United States hadn’t hosted Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith, the Schenker circle, and a critical mass of German musicologists, we might not have music-​ theory PhD programs in prestigious American universities. The French and Italian pedagogical traditions that made their way to American shores—​the Boulanger tradition prominent among them—​didn’t aim to produce “music theorists”; they produced composers and pedagogues, some of whom later jumped onto the PhD bandwagon because that’s where the paychecks were. American theory in its institutionalized form is Germanic both in its origins and, to a remarkably persistent degree, in its essence. The reason American theorists have been slow to face this fact is the same reason that led Donald Tovey, during the interwar period, to equate German music with “the main stream of music.”7 “German” is taken, quite simply, as the default value of “music,” the only kind of music whose nationality never needs to be mentioned. American theorists may speak of French music, Russian music, or American music, but for the period from 1750 to 1900, to speak of “German music” would seem redundant, like “wet ocean.” Where eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​ century music is concerned, many American theorists still limit themselves to Schenker’s dozen: the twelve composers, ten of them German, on whom Schenker focused almost all of his published work after 1910. Sylvan Kalib seems to have been the first to list them: J. S. Bach, Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, (Felix) Mendelssohn, (Robert) Schumann, Chopin, and Brahms.8 Of these twelve, several eschewed operatic composition (the two Bachs, Chopin, and Brahms) or composed just one opera (Beethoven and Schumann). Three (Scarlatti, Schubert, and Mendelssohn) tried their hand at opera without great success. Only Handel and Mozart were widely known for their operas, Haydn’s operatic activities having been restricted mostly to provincial Esterháza. Save for some early attention to Don Giovanni, Schenker never focused his analytical activity on opera. 6 Ludwig Holtmeier, “From ‘Musiktheorie’ to ‘Tonsatz’: National Socialism and German Music Theory after 1945,” Music Analysis 23 (2004): 245–​66. 7 Donald F. Tovey, The Main Stream of Music (London: Humphrey, 1938); rept. in Tovey, The Main Stream of Music and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949). 8 Sylvan Sol Kalib, “Thirteen Essays from Das Meisterwerk in Musik by Heinrich Schenker: An Annotated Translation” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1973).

xiv  T  Preface Among nineteenth-​century composers unsanctioned by Schenker, several have found their way to the sustained attention of American theorists: the “New Germans” Liszt and Wagner, along with their artistic descendants Wolf, Mahler, and Richard Strauss; a few women composers, mostly German; to a lesser degree Tchaikovsky; to a still lesser degree Fauré. Even Dvoř️ák remains on the fringes.9 Verdi’s music makes cameo appearances in theory journals, but it is mostly music dating from after 1870—​ music that, not coincidentally, received increasing approbation from German critics such as Eduard Hanslick. The notion that Aida, the Requiem, Otello, and Falstaff represent the “good” Verdi is one with which I have little patience. This is one reason why I end this book where I do, more than a decade before any Wagner opera was performed in Italy. It will be objected that, since the turn of this century, many American theorists have turned away from German Opusmusik toward Anglophone popular music. While this is true, it is not germane to my argument, which concerns the period from 1750 to 1900. Philip Ewell has noted the prejudice that faces Western theorists who study Russian music.10 A similar prejudice faces American theorists whenever they leave the Germanosphere, unless they leave the province of European art music entirely. A promising sign of change comes from the recent upsurge of interest in the pedagogical tradition of partimento and solfeggio, which spread from Naples to northern Italy in the eighteenth century and to France around 1800.11 Interest in the composed repertoires associated with the Neapolitan tradition has developed more slowly, but some modest applications of partimento and solfeggio to nineteenth-​century Italian opera have been published.12 Many more are needed. What I would like American theorists to do is what I have trained myself to do since I got serious about Italian opera: to learn to hear different kinds of music with different ears—​German ears for German music, Italian ears for Italian music, and so forth. Learning to hear through the filter of other musical cultures, while accepting no culture as universal, might be compared to learning those cultures’ languages; indeed, the former may be dependent on the latter. If the learning is done in adulthood the results are likely to be imperfect, but they are still worth striving for. Harold Powers, whom I got to know in his last years, had an impressive pair of multicultural ears. Those familiar with his writings on Italian opera will find many traces of his influence in these pages. Some words about my own journey seem in order, because this is not a typical book about opera, and my circuitous path to it may help to explain its idiosyncrasies.

9 Honorable mention must go to PhD dissertations on Dvoř️ák by theorists Leslie Kinton (University of Toronto, 2008) and Xieyi Zhang (City University of New York, 2019). 10 Philip Ewell, “On Rimsky-​Korsakov’s False (Hexatonic) Progressions outside the Limits of a Tonality,” Music Theory Spectrum 42 (2020): 122–​42; 140. 11 See especially Giorgio Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), and Nicholas Baragwanath, The Solfeggio Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). 12 See the analyses in Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions and Puccini (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

Preface  T  xv I knew next to nothing about opera before my undergraduate years. A taste for nineteenth-​century Italian opera came still later, in my mid-​twenties. My parents had no musical training, but my father had a good ear. Born just on the Polish side of the Polish–​Soviet border,13 he was drafted into the Red Army when the Soviets invaded in 1939. In 1943 he was posted to Moscow, where he enjoyed going to the Bolshoi; tickets, he said, cost one ruble. He liked operetta, and he could sing the trumpet tune from Aida. Unfortunately, his opera-​going habit didn’t survive the move to America—​first New York, then Wisconsin. He owned an LP of highlights from La traviata, but I don’t remember him ever listening to it. My musical life began in Milwaukee, which at one time was known as the German Athens. Until 1960 it was governed by the Socialist Party, whose local founder was an Austrian Jew named Victor Berger. Much of the city’s elite was of German descent, and both of its concert halls, the Pabst and the Uihlein, were named after brewery owners. I studied German in high school, and my musical upbringing was thoroughly Germanic. My piano teacher fed me a steady diet of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; Brahms was her favorite composer, but she said I wasn’t ready for him. My parents weren’t concertgoers, but my fourth-​grade teacher, a serious amateur pianist, would take me to the Pabst Theater to hear the Chicago Symphony; in those days they played ten concerts a year in Milwaukee. When a music-​loving philanthropist decided that I should have theory lessons, and paid for them, I composed faux-​Bach chorales and a string quartet. In high school I began to play the modernists, gravitating especially to the Second Viennese School. It was as German a musical upbringing as could be had outside of Germany. It never occurred to anyone, including me, that I should attend an opera. As an undergraduate at Northwestern, I went to the Chicago Lyric Opera exactly three times, hearing Wozzeck, Siegfried, and Pelléas et Mélisande. The school put on one opera each year, and I played in the orchestra for Ariadne auf Naxos (Strauss), L’enfant et les sortilèges (Ravel), and The Knot Garden (Tippett). That’s six operas, five of them twentieth-​century and none of them Italian. As a soloist I performed mostly twentieth-​ century music, up to and including Stockhausen. I entered the concerto competition with Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, and my senior recital included the four-​hand arrangement of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. When I left for New England Conservatory and found myself studying analysis with Ernst Oster, Oster’s worshipful attitude toward high German culture, especially that of the Goethezeit, seemed only a little more intense than I was used to from Milwaukee. Nevertheless, Oster’s teaching was revelatory, and it turned me into a music theorist. Now that I was a graduate student, I needed to earn money: my scholarship covered tuition and my parents paid my rent, but I had to eat. I became a hyperactive accompanist, and much of the work that fell my way involved singers. Gradually, and without meaning to—​indeed, while very much meaning not to—​I was bitten by the vocal bug. For a vocal bug, a melody sung is not the same thing 13 His shtetl, Skalat, lay 45 miles from Heinrich Schenker’s shtetl, Wisniowczyk. Both lie in present-​ day Ukraine.

xvi  T  Preface as the same melody played on an instrument; the medium is an irreducible part of the message. A vocal bug will choose a ticket to the Metropolitan Opera over a ticket to the New York Philharmonic nine times out of ten. As I began doctoral study at Yale, the Schenkerian theorist Carl Schachter published an essay in which, among other things, he analyzed an excerpt from Philip II’s soliloquy in Verdi’s Don Carlos. None of my theory teachers had so much as mentioned Verdi in my hearing, but Schachter unreservedly described Philip’s scene as “great,” a judgment that I knew he did not bestow lightly. I concluded that I needed to get to know Verdi better, and Don Carlos, in Italian, was where I started.14 Now that I was living near New York, I began to attend the Metropolitan Opera on occasion; those occasions came a little more frequently once I was employed and could afford tickets (alas, they cost more than one ruble). My opera bug was soon nourished by the likes of Shirley Verrett and Plácido Domingo, whose respective performances as Eboli (in Don Carlos) and Pollione (in Norma) remain the most indelible of my early opera-​going experiences. Long a collector of recordings, I began to seek out performances not only by Wilhelm Furtwängler but by Maria Callas. For three years I accompanied Phyllis Curtin’s weekly studio class at Yale; for one of those years I also observed her summer classes at Tanglewood. Phyllis (nobody called her Miss Curtin twice) was an inspiration to generations of American singers, and she had an extremely catholic approach to repertoire. I came to understand singing much better thanks to Phyllis, and I learned a good deal of repertoire in the process. In addition to Schachter and Curtin, the conductor Will Crutchfield must take some of the blame for my operatic obsession. In 1993, Schachter, Crutchfield, and I gave daily lectures to a week-​long Chopin workshop in England under the leadership of Murray Perahia, who gave master classes. Crutchfield was there to illuminate the relation of Chopin’s music to the bel canto tradition, and I came to understand that connection more fully with his guidance. More immediately, it was Crutchfield’s performance of Bellini’s Il pirata at the Caramoor Festival that clinched my decision to devote myself to the analysis of Italian opera. Not only did I find Bellini’s opera a masterpiece (I was hearing it for the first time); hearing it crystallized my conviction that early nineteenth-​century Italian opera follows fundamentally different structural principles than the German music that had formed the basis of my training. That fall, I taught my first seminar on nineteenth-​ century opera at the CUNY Graduate Center. To adopt a trope of Carolyn Abbate’s, my knowledge of Italian opera is both drastic and gnostic. As much as any opera fan, I revel in the emotion-​drenched present of an operatic performance, but I also keep my structural hearing (as Felix Salzer called it) in the “on” position. Some might argue that structural hearing is itself a German artifact, and they would have a point; but I continue to find it illuminating, so long as one accepts that the music of different cultures may be based on structures of different kinds. My disquiet with Abbate’s dichotomy (which originates with Vladimir Jankélévitch) owes to the fact that I experience 14 On the question of language in Don Carlos see Will Crutchfield, “ ‘Don Carlo’ or ‘Don Carlos’? Verdi Comes to the Met in French,” New York Times, 25 February 2022.

Preface  T  xvii opera, both live and recorded, in both ways simultaneously, whereas she opposes the two. Although I have accompanied my share of opera, the perspective of this book is emphatically that of a listener. The analyses in these pages represent opera as heard, even if many details were filled in after the event with the help of a score. The most valuable analytical insights are often captured on the fly, in the real time of a performance. The rest is afterglow. The perspective taken in this book is not that of a typical operagoer. It is that of one person listening, usually to recorded rather than live performances, and reflecting afterward—​sometimes with a score, sometimes without; sometimes with a libretto, sometimes without. The social and political dimensions of opera are entirely absent from this book. As much as singers have inspired me, the singer’s perspective is also absent. As a result, the names that populate my index are overwhelmingly male: they belong to composers and theorists, not singers. Although music by nineteenth-​century women is increasingly performed and studied, a woman had no chance of receiving a contract to compose an opera for any Italian theater. Fortunately, the singer’s perspective on nineteenth-​century opera is being addressed, not least by my CUNY colleague Karen Henson.15 Speaking of theorists, this book relies to a significant degree on the ideas of theorists who lived most of their lives during the long nineteenth century. Among the most significant are Bonifazio Asioli (1769–​ 1832), François-​ Joseph Fétis (1784–​1871), Hugo Riemann (1849–​1919), and Heinrich Schenker (1868–​1935). These were nineteenth-​century people with nineteenth-​century values. As the century progressed, those values increasingly included toxic nationalism, militarism, and racism. These were hardly absent from the century’s first half, but the intellectual climate changed around midcentury. Racism was not only expressed but theorized in the writings of Arthur de Gobineau, Charles Darwin, and others. Richard Wagner published Judaism in Music, anonymously at first but then under his own name. Imperialism intensified. During what is sometimes described as globalization’s first wave, it seemed as though everyone was talking and writing about race. While “scientific” racists labored to justify the superior position of the white race, the Dreyfus affair in France, Karl Lueger’s antisemitic government in Vienna, and pogroms in the Russian Empire made Europe an increasingly inhospitable place for Jews. As Thomas Christensen demonstrates in his recent book on Fétis, the Belgian theorist’s lifelong interest in the musics of long ago and far away curdled, by the 1860s, into the pseudo-​scientific racism peddled by Gobineau, whose Essay on the Inequality of Races Fétis read closely.16 Riemann’s interest in cultures outside the West dates mostly from his later years, but, as Alexander Rehding has shown, the fundamental inequality of races and cultures (with northern Europeans at the top) is never questioned.17 15 Karen Henson, Opera Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 16 Thomas Christensen, Stores of Tonality in the Age of François-​Joseph Fétis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). 17 Alexander Rehding, Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

xviii  T  Preface The case of Schenker, much debated today, will be examined briefly here and in a little more detail in ­chapter 3. Unlike the other theorists listed above, Schenker lived well past the end of World War I, which his side lost. Once the prospect of an easy victory for the Central Powers had vanished, Schenker’s social and political views, till then unexceptional in the Austro-​ German context, darkened. He became a bitter reactionary, hostile to the Allied countries and identifying with Germany as a nation with a special, salvific mission, if only it would accept that mission. He wasn’t the only Austrian to feel that way. Around 1980, my teacher Allen Forte remarked to me that if Schenker hadn’t been Jewish, he probably would have been a Nazi. I disagreed, arguing that Schenker, who railed against democracy after 1918, was a Habsburg monarchist who found himself unexpectedly deprived of his monarch. But the eventual publication of Schenker’s letters and diaries, beginning with Hellmut Federhofer’s book Heinrich Schenker: nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, convinced me that Forte had a point. Schenker remembered Karl Lueger fondly in 1926, when a memorial to the late mayor was unveiled in Vienna.18 In May 1933, Schenker proclaimed Hitler one of history’s greatest Germans, not for his racial policies but for ridding Germany of Marxism.19 Of course Schenker was Jewish, and the untenability of his position seems to have dawned on him some time before his death in January 1935. Perhaps the veil fell in early 1934, when Schenker’s theory was suppressed in Germany,20 or in July, when the Nazis assassinated Engelbert Dollfuß, the Austrian dictator whom Schenker supported.21 Schenker’s disenchantment with the Nazis may explain the statement in his final book, Der freie Satz, that reads, “music is accessible to all races and creeds alike.”22 Carl Schachter has claimed, plausibly, that this was a late addition to the manuscript, intended to distance Schenker from Nazi ideology.23 However desperate Schenker’s love for Germany may have been, it wasn’t returned: Hitler’s regime told him that he wasn’t German and never had been. Another prominent Jew in this book is Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–​1864). Meyerbeer was fortunate to live when he did; his triumphant career would have been inconceivable half a century earlier or later. Indeed, the composer Vincent 18 Schenker, diary entry for 19 September 1926; Schenker Documents Online (https://​sche​nker​docu​ ment​sonl​ine.org/​docume​nts/​diar​ies/​OJ-​03-​08_​1​926-​09/​r0019.html, accessed 8 July 2021). 19 Schenker, letter to Felix-​Eberhard von Cube, 14 May 1933. The passage is quoted and translated in William Drabkin, “Felix-​Eberhard von Cube and the Tradition of North-​German Schenkerism,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 111 (1984–​85): 180–​207; 189. Von Cube was a Nazi party member between 1932 and 1934. 20 See von Cube’s letter to Schenker of 29 April 1934; Schenker Documents Online (https://​sche​nker​ docu​ment​sonl​ine.org/​docume​nts/​cor​resp​onde​nce/​OJ-​9-​34_​39.html, accessed 8 July 2021). 21 See Oswald Jonas’s letter to Schenker of 6 August 1934; Schenker Documents Online (https://​sche​ nker​docu​ment​sonl​ine.org/​docume​nts/​cor​resp​onde​nce/​OJ-​12-​6_​36.html, accessed 6 March 2021). Schenker’s reaction to Dollfuß’s assassination is described in Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker, 356. 22 Schenker, Free Composition (Der freie Satz), trans. and ed. Ernst Oster (New York: Longman, 1979), xxiii. 23 Carl Schachter, “Elephants, Crocodiles, and Beethoven: Schenker’s Politics and the Pedagogy of Schenkerian Analysis,” Theory and Practice 26 (2001): 1–​20; 3.

Preface  T  xix d’Indy classified the period 1825–​1867 as la période judaïque and celebrated the fact that it had ended.24 But it is as a German, not as a Jew, that Meyerbeer’s place in this book requires justification. After the decline of the Neapolitan school around 1800, it becomes more difficult to speak of a purely national Italian opera. Foreign influence came mostly from France, which ruled Naples briefly in 1799 and again from 1806 to 1815. During the nineteenth century, French and Italian opera engaged in a continuous process of cross-​fertilization. Italian poets routinely sought out French plays to turn into librettos. Spontini and Cherubini, both Italian, made their operatic careers in Paris, but their influence extended beyond France. Rossini conducted Spontini’s Fernand Cortez shortly before he composed his own Maometto II (1820), and something of Spontini’s grand manner rubbed off on this and subsequent Rossini operas.25 Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi all composed for Paris once their fame was established. All but Bellini composed operas in French and adopted aspects of French musical style. Meyerbeer began his career as a pupil of the Abbé Vogler, who also taught Carl Maria von Weber and Gottfried Weber (no relation). In 1816, having composed a few operas in German, he moved to Italy, where he scored major successes, of which the greatest would be Il crociato in Egitto (Venice, 1824). His main Italian librettist was Gaetano Rossi, who also wrote for Rossini when the latter composed for Venice. That Meyerbeer and Rossini had an impact on each other’s work seems certain, and Rossi served as a conduit. In an 1822 letter to Meyerbeer, Rossi declared that for Rossini’s Semiramide he was writing “an introduzione à la Meyerbeer,” meaning an introductory number of huge dimensions in which the opera’s principal characters sing.26 The introduzioni of Rossini’s early serious operas were short choruses from which principal characters were excluded; making the audience wait for the principals was the point. It is unclear, at least to me, where the new type of introduzione originated: it appears in operas by Rossini and Meyerbeer at about the same time. In Rossi’s mind, however, it was associated with Meyerbeer. Once Rossini and Meyerbeer moved to Paris in the 1820s, both participated in the development of the musico-​dramatic spectacle known as grand opéra. But it was Meyerbeer’s grand operas, not Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, that had an immediate and lasting impact on Italian opera, from Mercadante’s “reform” operas to Donizetti’s last operas to Verdi’s operas from the mid-​1840s onward. It is difficult 24 Vincent d’Indy, Un école d’art répondant aux besoins modernes, in La Tribune de Saint-​Gervais 6 (1900): 303–​14; d’Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 3 (Paris: Durand, 1950), 103–​16. 25 See the illuminating account in Alessandro Lattanzi, “Spontini’s Panoply: The Sound of Martial Music and the Clamor of War in Fernand Cortez,” in Oper und Militärmusik im ‘langen’ 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Achim Hofer (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2020), 25–​59. Lattanzi calls into question the link between Spontini and Bonapartism, connecting him instead to a long tradition of onstage military music in Neapolitan opera, including Paisiello’s Pirro (1787). 26 Gaetano Rossi, letter to Rossini, 28 October 1822; quoted in Paolo Fabbri, “Librettos and Librettists,” in The Cambridge Companion to Rossini, ed. Emanuele Senici (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 55.

xx  T  Preface to imagine Verdi’s music—​or Wagner’s, for that matter—​without Meyerbeer as a model.27

How to Read This Book My ideal reader has some aural familiarity with the operas I discuss, realizes figured basses fluently, and is comfortable with the apparatus of Schenkerian analysis. I have just described three groups of readers that do not greatly intersect, especially the first with the last. My publisher would prefer to sell more copies than fewer, and I would prefer to have more readers than fewer. Yet this is by no means an introductory book. I am inviting readers to grapple with some degree of discomfort—​with my repertoire, my analytical approach, or both. It is a time-​ honored convention for authors to beg the indulgence of their readers, with or without the Glorious Garrison. I do so more fervently than most. To theorists who have managed to steer clear of this repertoire, I invite you to take the plunge: listen and enjoy! But keep an eye out for constructive principles that you have been accustomed to associate with other repertoires: Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, etc. You may be surprised to find that your favorite nineteenth-​century composers have Italian relatives. A warning, however: Do not seek a Grand Unified Theory in these pages. I am a fox, not a hedgehog.28 To opera lovers who have read such authors as Julian Budden, David Kimbell, or Pierluigi Petrobelli, take heart: you will find much that is familiar in these pages. If you have also read Harold Powers, you should feel right at home. If voice-​leading graphs are foreign to you, please take this book to a keyboard and play through the graphs as you read. As I never tire of telling my students, voice-​leading graphs are meant to be heard and not (only) seen. If you have some ability in figured-​bass realization, it will come in handy. Many of my graphs show bass lines only, but those basses are always figured in some fashion. They are never intended to be read monophonically, but always as bass plus harmony. If what you really want is to read about your favorite operas, by all means turn to the index and look them up, keeping in mind that this book includes very little about comic opera. Reading this book in order has its advantages, but individual chapters and analyses are to some degree self-​contained. If you are marinated in German music and need a fast-​acting antidote, ­chapter 1 may be just the thing. If the forms of Italian Romantic opera are new to you, please read ­chapter 5 before you proceed to later chapters.

27 See Andreas Giger’s review of Gloria Staffieri, Musicare la Storia. Il giovane Verdi e il grand opéra (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 2017), in Bollettino di studi belliniani 4 (2018): 106–​12. 28 In fact, I am a reformed hedgehog. Earlier in my career I was a too single-​minded follower of Heinrich Schenker. That my thinking is still informed by Schenker’s ideas is demonstrated throughout this book. For the mammalian imagery see Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953).

Preface  T  xxi

Organization of This Book This book is divided into four parts. The first part is primarily theoretical, the others analytical/​historical. Part I sets the stage by considering such issues as nineteenth-​century theory (­chapter 2), the relevance of Schenker and Riemann (­chapter 3), and issues of rhythm and musical form (­chapters 4–​5). Chapter 1 is different: it examines a single number from Verdi’s Il trovatore as an exercise in analytical defamiliarization. Its object is to demonstrate the inadequacy, for nineteenth-​century Italian opera, of analytical tools devised for the study of German instrumental music. If existing tools won’t do the job, new tools must be forged or old tools adapted. Parts II and IV are devoted to Rossini and Verdi respectively; part III treats four composers who came in between. The analyses in parts II–​IV build on ideas from part I, but there is a certain amount of ad hoc theorizing to fit the variety of situations encountered in a half-​century of operatic music. As in my book Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, the analytical chapters trace a process of historical change.29 In the year this book begins, 1813, the Italian operatic tradition is being revived by Rossini after two decades of lesser brilliance. In 1859, the year of its end, the tradition is reaching an inflection point with Verdi’s semi-​retirement after the premiere of Un ballo in maschera. The tradition itself continues until Puccini’s death in 1924, but after 1860 it becomes more cosmopolitan and, simultaneously, less fertile. The international press plays a larger role in operatic life; the pressure on composers to produce “masterpieces” increases correspondingly. Imported ideas such as “naturalism” and “Wagnerism” become prominent in Italian aesthetic debates. To soften the ground for a premiere with an artillery of newsprint was a practice perfected by Meyerbeer in France and Wagner in Germany. By the 1860s, the virus had spread to Italy. The operatic world began to resemble that of the publicity-​drenched twentieth and twenty-​first centuries.

29 Readers familiar with the literature on Italian opera will notice that this book traces an evolution similar to that explored in Scott L. Balthazar, “Evolving Conventions in Italian Serious Opera: Scene Structure in the Works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, 1810–​1850” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1985). Our approaches differ, but there is inevitably some overlap between this study and Balthazar’s.

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

I began writing this book in 2014 at the suggestion of Richard Cohn, then series editor of Oxford Studies in Music Theory. My first thanks go to Rick for believing that this book needed to be written, and that I was the one who should write it. Steven Rings, Rick's successor as series editor, helped to see the book through to publication. Since I began to study opera around the turn of the century, I have found myself welcomed into the community of opera scholars to a greater extent than I anticipated. Two key figures in the early stages of my research are no longer with us: Philip Gossett and Harold Powers. Gossett never quite approved of my work because I wasn’t studying compositional genesis, but he, along with Andreas Giger, helped with sources for Un ballo in maschera and was unfailingly kind. Powers, who seemed genuinely excited by my work, encouraged me at each step until his untimely death in 2007. While this book was in progress, I had the opportunity to lecture at the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi in Venice and the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani in Parma. Both experiences were extremely helpful. I thank both organizations for their hospitality, especially the then-​directors of their scientific committees, Luisa Zanoncelli (Levi Foundation) and Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini (INSV). Among my American colleagues I extend thanks and appreciation to Deborah Burton, David Rosen, and James Webster for reading and listening to my ideas and offering helpful feedback. David Lawton sent me a copy of his dissertation when I had difficulty obtaining it elsewhere. Two anonymous readers for Oxford University Press led me to clarify certain points and helped to strengthen my arguments. Among my Italian colleagues I thank Giorgio Sanguinetti, Fabrizio Della Seta, and Lorenzo Bianconi for their continued interest in and support of my work. Marcello Conati, whom I never met, died not long after my Parma lectures, which he was too ill to attend. His book on Rigoletto, now sadly out of print, was important to me when I was a fledgling Verdi scholar. It was also the first book that I ever read in Italian. In 2011 I lectured on Bellini at Louisiana State University; Inessa Bazayev and Andreas Giger were the perfect hosts. That lecture formed the core of my article “Tonal Structures in Bellini,” which later appeared in Journal of Music Theory (vol. 56, no. 2, 2012). I thank JMT and Duke University Press for permission to reproduce most of the examples and some of the text from that article. Some material in

xxiv  T  Acknowledgments c­ hapters 1 and 8 first appeared in Music Theory Online (vol. 14, no. 1, 2008; https://​ mto​smt.org/​iss​ues/​mto.08.14.1/​mto.08.14.1.rothst​ein.html). The American Institute of Verdi Studies allowed me to reuse musical examples that first appeared in Verdi Forum (no. 39, 2012). The cost of preparing musical examples for this book was underwritten by three generous subventions: from the Society for Music Theory; the General Publications Fund of the American Musicological Society, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and The City of New York PSC-​CUNY Research Award Program. I am very grateful for all three. The examples themselves were typeset by Dr. Benjamin Ayotte of Ayotte Custom Musical Engravings. I was fortunate to have access to the extensive collections at New York University’s Bobst Library, including the archive of the American Institute of Verdi Studies. The interlibrary loan office at the CUNY Graduate Center was a much-​ needed lifeline, especially during the COVID-​19 pandemic. The staff of the Queens College Music Library helped in more ways than they know. I especially thank that library’s recently departed head, Jennifer Oates, for her belief that critical editions of Bellini and Meyerbeer are as necessary to a music library as those of Schubert and Mendelssohn. My former Queens College student Daniil Zavlunov studied Semiramide with me and shared his knowledge and love of primo ottocento opera. My former department chair at Queens College, Edward Smaldone, helped facilitate the sabbatical during which this book was begun. My wife Lori, an opera lover in her own right, was my steady companion at Caramoor and the Met. She helped keep the wind in my operatic sails.

Introduction What Is There to Analyze?

Anyone who attends a performance of Verdi’s Otello (1887), whether in Verdi’s time or ours, can expect to hear the same music as at any other performance. The language sung might vary from one country to another, but the notes will be the same. (Vocal rhythms may differ slightly if the libretto has been translated.) The operagoer can follow along with a published score, and the music heard will correspond to the notes seen. The soprano portraying Desdemona will not replace the Willow Song with the Bell Song from Lakmé; nor will she make her first entrance singing “Una voce poco fa” from Il barbiere di Siviglia; nor will she interpolate a high E♭ at the end of “Ave Maria.” The third-​ act ballet, composed by Verdi for a Paris production, might or might not be included, but no one other than Verdi would be allowed to add music to the opera. Almost certainly, nothing will have been cut from the opera’s original version. It is unlikely that any music will have been transposed to a different key, although Verdi himself made transpositions as he composed. If a role lay too high or too low for a certain singer, another singer would be chosen. Singers are replaceable, but the composer’s score is regarded as law, and it must be faithfully executed. Someone who attends a performance of Rossini’s Otello (1816) has never had the same assurance of fidelity to the score, especially during the composer’s lifetime. Each performance might be significantly different. Early Desdemonas routinely compensated for the lack of an entrance aria (which Rossini did not provide) by adding an aria from another opera, perhaps by a different composer. The role of Iago, composed for a tenor, was sometimes sung by a baritone once baritones became fashionable. Music was transposed upward or downward to suit individual singers, regardless of such arcana as key relations. In its original Neapolitan production, the opera ended tragically, like Shakespeare’s play (tragic endings were still a novelty in Italy). In Rome, where the opera was performed in 1820, tragic endings were forbidden, so Rossini and his librettist substituted a happy one. Arias and duets were added and subtracted at will. As for vocal lines, it was understood that they could and often should be embellished liberally, especially in repeated passages.

The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0001

2  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera All the music of Verdi’s Otello was composed for that opera and no other. Once the opera was composed and orchestrated, it was quickly published in both full and vocal score by a well-​established publisher, Ricordi of Milan, to whom Verdi was under contract. Both scores were carefully proofread, and Verdi earned royalties from them. He was also paid by La Scala, the Milan opera house where Otello was premiered. Some parts of Rossini’s Otello were originally composed for earlier operas, including one passage—​in the murder scene, no less—​lifted from Il barbiere di Siviglia, which had premiered in Rome a few months earlier. After Otello had received its first performances in Naples, copyists prepared handwritten scores for specific productions elsewhere. The opera was first published (in vocal score only) around 1820, not by an Italian publisher but by Breitkopf & Härtel of Leipzig. Whether Rossini was paid for this publication is unclear, because international copyright laws did not exist.1 Ricordi followed with its own vocal score a few years later, but Rossini played no part in its publication. Meanwhile, French publishers issued their own vocal scores of Otello, adding an aria from Rossini’s La donna del lago because Giuditta Pasta had sung it upon her entrance as Desdemona at Paris’s Théâtre-​Italien in 1821. A full score, in French, was published in 1824, but it was an adaptation for French theaters, not the score that Rossini had written. Verdi’s Otello is a work in the full, modern sense of the term. It has a fixed verbal text by Arrigo Boito and a fixed musical text by Verdi. Both were created for this opera and would never be recycled into another. Both texts, the verbal and the musical, have been analyzed by scholars. In what sense is Rossini’s Otello a work? If one wishes to analyze this opera, what is there to analyze? This introduction attempts to answer these questions, although its answers will be less metaphysical than pragmatic.2 The matter of verbal texts can be addressed fairly briefly. The reuse of poems or libretti for musical setting is not a pressing issue; it is mostly irrelevant to the task of the music analyst, and it has no bearing on the question of what constitutes a musical work. Each of Schubert’s four settings of Goethe’s “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” (from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre) constitutes a unique work. The most celebrated of Pietro Metastasio’s libretti were set dozens of times during the eighteenth century, but nobody questions that Vinci’s Artaserse is a different work from Hasse’s. For that matter, Rossini set Metastasio’s poem “Mi lagnerò tacendo” almost fifty times, producing an equal number of distinct songs. On occasion, both Bellini and Verdi composed the music for an operatic piece before they had received the words for it; conventions of poetic form and meter made this possible. In short, what matters to a musical work is not the verbal text but the musical one. It is here, in the status of their

See Bernd-​ Rüdiger Kern, “Rossinis Umgang mit urheberrechtlichen Fragen,” La gazzetta 10 (2000): 4–​16. According to Kern, it took until 1840 for cross-​border copyright laws to be negotiated even among states of the Italian peninsula. Only France had modern copyright laws, but they were valid for France only. 2 A classic statement of the problem is Philip Gossett, “Knowing the Score: Italian Opera as Work and Play,” Text 8 (1995): 1–​24. This article originated as a presidential address to the Society for Textual Scholarship. 1

  Introduction  T  3 respective musical texts, that the two Otellos, Rossini’s and Verdi’s, seem to belong to different epochs. Philip Gossett and others have detailed the freedom with which Rossini’s operas were treated in the nineteenth century.3 Printed librettos, which document individual productions, are often the best and sometimes the only evidence for what was performed in a given place and time. As happened with Rossini’s Otello, even a published vocal score might reflect not what the composer wrote but what the singers sang in a particular theater. To some extent, the musical parts of Otello were seen even by their composer as interchangeable with parts of other Rossini operas. We have seen that some music was recycled into Otello from earlier operas, although this was far less true of Otello than of its Neapolitan predecessor, Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (1815). Elisabetta is almost a pasticcio in the eighteenth-​century sense, a series of pieces taken from other operas, although in this case the pieces are all by Rossini. The international success of Otello prevented Rossini from reusing its music in later operas, as he did, for example, with the music of Armida (Naples, 1817). The claim of Otello to uniqueness, and thus to work-​status, is bolstered by this accident of reception history. On the other hand, Rossini himself inserted music from Armida into the Roman revival of Otello. It is here claimed that the Otello that Rossini composed and scored in 1816 is as close as Otello ever came to being a work in the modern sense. As Gossett recounts,4 Rossini eventually cleansed the opera of its accretions of music from other operas. He restored it to three acts, although acts 2 and 3 had sometimes been performed together. (Act 3 is among Rossini’s most striking creations and was immediately recognized as such.) He was willing to add and subtract music from the score whenever doing so aided the success of a production, but there existed in his mind something like an ideal Otello, and he defended its integrity once he had the chance to do so. If we are to analyze Otello, this ideal Otello is the Otello we should analyze. This does not preclude ornamentation on the part of the singers; Rossini expected singers to embellish their parts, and he occasionally provided embellishments for those who were unable to provide their own.5 But so, on occasion, did Chopin for his piano works. Chopin’s musical texts for the same work often diverge somewhat, even where the manuscript sources are all autograph, but these are works with fuzzy edges—​fuzzy works, if you will—​not non-​works. As I have written elsewhere, “an analyst, describing in technical language the mental residue of a real or imagined performance, must analyze something more or less fixed, much as a conductor must choose a musical text to perform on a given occasion.”6 Reference to a conductor may be anachronistic for Rossini’s The following discussion is based primarily on Gossett, Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 4 Gossett, Divas and Scholars, 209–​10 and 490. 5 On vocal ornamentation during this period see Will Crutchfield, “Vocal Performance in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Cambridge History of Musical Performance, ed. Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 611–​42; also Austin Caswell, “Mme. Cinti-​ Damoreau and the Performance of Italian Opera in Paris: 1820–​1845,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 28 (1975): 459–​92. 6 Rothstein, “Tonal Structures in Bellini,” Journal of Music Theory 56 (2012): 225–​83; 232. 3

4  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Italian operas, but the point remains valid. If an analyst wishes to produce an analysis, one analysis, of a given opera, a fixed text must be chosen. If multiple, distinct texts of the same opera are admitted, multiple analyses will result. I do not object to multiple texts or multiple analyses, but taking that path would make this book even longer than it is and would restrict its scope to fewer operas. I have therefore chosen a single musical text for each opera that I discuss. If one text is to be chosen, reasons can be adduced for choosing either the earliest or the latest version to come from the composer’s hand—​the original, inspired conception or the final, considered thought. In older musicology, it is famously die Fassung letzter Hand that has been favored. Beethoven’s Leonore of 1805 is treated as a curiosity to be trotted out on occasion, but the 1814 revision known as Fidelio continues to hold the stage. For Verdi, one almost always encounters the 1865 Macbeth rather than the 1847 original, the 1869 La forza del destino rather than the St. Petersburg version of 1862, the opulent Simon Boccanegra of 1881 rather than the spare original of 1857. The latest version is taken as the definitive work. Verdi himself generally adopted this attitude after 1850. This was not always the case for his Italian predecessors, nor for Verdi himself in the first decade of his career. Before 1850, revisions of an opera were usually intended not to perfect the work sub specie æternitatis but to tailor old costumes to fit new actors. Revisions for Paris constitute a special case, and not only where Italian operas are concerned. The Paris Tannhäuser of 1860 has never displaced Wagner’s 1845 original. Paris audiences expected to see a ballet in a serious opera, whereas Italian audiences, equally ballet-​mad, preferred to separate the genres. In Italy, a ballet was placed after each act of a two-​act opera. Ballet plots usually had little to do with the plot of the evening’s opera; ballets and operas were composed by different people. Verdi’s Le trouvère, which includes a ballet, postdates Il trovatore but is a rarity today. The Paris Macbeth has displaced the Florentine original because the 1865 music is so impressive, but its ballet is usually cut. The ballet added to Verdi’s Otello for Paris has already been mentioned; it is rarely performed today. Revisions for Italian houses tended to be made for one of three reasons: to adjust a role to suit a new singer; to accommodate changes to the libretto made at the insistence of a censor; or to replace, or revise, pieces from an opera when those pieces had failed to please. Generally, the first two types of revision were temporary, specific to a particular production; for purposes of this book they are irrelevant except in the case of Un ballo in maschera (discussed below).7 The third type, by contrast, often resulted in changes that the composer retained. Revisions of this kind were often made soon after the premiere, and, if they were, they might be considered definitive for our purposes. A prime example is the 1854 revision of Verdi’s La traviata, made after the failure of the 1853 premiere. Why mere failure was so important to composers may require clarification. Contrary to modernist values, Italian composers considered the judgment of Italian audiences to be just: if See David Lawton and David Rosen, “Verdi’s Non-​Definitive Revisions: The Early Operas,” in Atti del IIIo Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1974), 189–​237. 7

  Introduction  T  5 an audience thought an opera was bad and the performance had been adequate, the composer accepted the verdict. There was no notion of the misunderstood genius, no Italian Berlioz, no Music of the Future, until a younger generation of Italian aesthetes, the so-​called scapigliati (“disheveled ones”), imported these ideas in the 1860s. The rise of the scapigliati marks the end of an era in Italian aesthetics. This book takes a flexibly originalist position on the question of revisions. In early nineteenth-​century Italy, the composer of an opera was contractually obliged to supervise its first three performances, sitting with the orchestra as maestro di cembalo. Afterward his involvement in that production ceased, and he absented himself from any remaining performances; indeed, he often left the city. From that point on, the impresario and singers did exactly as they and their audiences pleased. A certain priority thus attaches to performances that the composer supervised personally. Wherever the original version of an opera as performed is recoverable, I choose it as my preferred version for analysis, but I allow exceptions in certain cases. A first type of exception concerns operas composed for Paris, especially for the Opéra—​formally known, for most of the period with which we are concerned, as the Académie Royale de Musique. For these operas I include pieces that were rehearsed but were cut shortly before the premiere. The Opéra, for practical reasons, did not permit performances to go past midnight. Rossini, Meyerbeer, and Verdi all had trouble staying within this limit, so they were forced to make cuts whether they liked it or not. These cuts could amount to as much as an hour of music. In this book, the Paris exception chiefly affects Rossini’s Guillaume Tell and Meyerbeer’s Le prophète. Both operas are available in critical editions in which early and later versions are included and distinguished from each other.8 Unfortunately, such editions do not yet exist for Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots or Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes. For these operas I rely on first editions, which reflect the operas after any pre-​first-​night cuts. A unique case is posed by Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, an opera discussed in this book’s final chapter. This opera is based on an historical incident, the 1792 assassination of King Gustavus III of Sweden at a masked ball. Auber’s Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué (1833) was based on the same event, but French artists enjoyed liberties unavailable to Italians. The censors forced Verdi and his librettist to move the opera’s setting away from French-​Revolutionary Sweden, first to seventeenth-​ century Pomerania (part of Prussia) and then to colonial Boston. Verdi’s draft of the intermediate version, titled Una vendetta in dominò, survives; the music fits the words of the original libretto, Gustavo III, with minimal adjustment. This hybrid, Swedish-​Pomeranian version—​as close as we shall ever get to Verdi’s original conception of the opera—​was first performed in 2002 and has been commercially recorded; a critical edition is in preparation. But Verdi regarded the 1859 version, set in Boston, as definitive, perhaps because it was the greatest success he had enjoyed since the revised La traviata five years earlier. In this case

8 Rossini, Guillaume Tell, critical edition by M. Elizabeth Bartlet; Meyerbeer, Le prophète, critical edition by Matthias Brzoska (both Milan: Ricordi).

6  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera I follow Verdi’s judgment in favor of the opera’s final version, the only version performed during his lifetime. Apart from Ballo, readers may be surprised at the extent to which I favor original over revised versions of operas. I discuss Rossini’s Maometto II (Naples, 1820) but have only a little to say about its French revision, Le siège de Corinthe (Paris, 1826). I analyze the terse Maria di Rohan that Donizetti premiered in Vienna (June 1843), not the expanded version he presented in Paris five months later. To the extent that I discuss Verdi’s Macbeth, I focus on the first version (Florence, 1847) rather than the second (Paris, 1865); similarly for Simon Boccanegra (Venice, 1857; Milan, 1881), which I treat at greater length. I bear no animus against the revised versions, although each represents both gains and losses in relation to the original. For each opera, I try to do what I suggested earlier with respect to Rossini’s Otello: to capture something like an ideal version of the work. Given the realities of Italian opera houses, an opera’s ideal version might be compared to the battle plan that, as Helmuth von Moltke famously observed, never survives first contact with the enemy. Italian composers, like Prussian generals, knew this and retained the requisite flexibility. For some operas—​including, arguably, Guillaume Tell and Maria di Rohan—​ there may be no ideal version. I treat only the later Donizetti in this book, and the texts of Donizetti’s last operas are especially unstable, the Italian ones even more than the French. Donizetti cut an already-​composed final cabaletta for Maria during the Vienna rehearsals of Maria di Rohan, retaining only its nine-​measure orchestral postlude, which he tacked on to the end of the preceding passage of action (a pistol has just been shot).9 The effect is astonishing, and it anticipates some of Verdi’s sudden final curtains, like the one that ends Il trovatore. What might have been a relatively routine ending for a Donizetti opera—​a cabaletta of despair—​became, at a stroke, one of the most stunning endings in all nineteenth-​ century opera. This is the ending that I address in c­ hapter 11, but it’s hard to shake the suspicion that it came about by accident. On the other hand, once Donizetti had found his ending—​or once the ending had found him—​he stuck with it, except that he excised fifteen more measures for Naples in 1844. By 1844, Donizetti’s career was effectively over, so it’s impossible to know what further changes, if any, he might have made to the opera’s conclusion. Similar considerations apply to the thorny issue of transpositions made by composers during the act of composition, or during rehearsals for an opera’s premiere. (To the extent that we analyze original versions, we avoid the issue of transpositions made during subsequent revisions.) James Hepokoski has detailed Verdi’s transposition of the quartet in Otello from B major to B♭ major, a transposition that Verdi made only after having heard and approved the soprano who was to sing Desdemona. He wrote to his friend and publisher, Giulio Ricordi: “[I]‌t is very likely that I will lower the quartet by a semitone. As it is, it shrieks too much, and all those Bs for the soprano and tenor are too daring.” What does this last-​minute change do to the musical structure of the opera? According

See the preface to the critical edition by Luca Zoppelli (Milan: Ricordi). 9

  Introduction  T  7 to Hepokoski, it means that the quartet participates in a different web of tonal relations than it did before, one having to do with the opera’s flat keys (especially F major) rather than its sharp keys (especially E major). What the alteration does not mean, according to Hepokoski, is that the deployment of keys in the opera is random. Hepokoski still places agency and intention in Verdi’s hands: Verdi removed the quartet from one network of tonal associations and joined it to another. Steven Huebner recounts Hepokoski’s findings about the Otello quartet, but unobtrusively—​almost as an afterthought—​he takes a more radical step: he allows that “an analyst temperamentally inclined to take a different tack” need not be limited to recovering the composer’s perhaps unrecoverable point of view.10 In effect (I am paraphrasing Huebner), in a work as lengthy and complex as a Verdi opera, long-​range associations may be created by the listener as well as the composer; the composer provides the raw material, which the listener may fashion into various shapes without worrying about authorial intent. As David Lewin might have put it, the listener stands apart from the work but is free to perceive it in any way she finds fruitful. This is a philosophy of listening as playful creation.11 It is a philosophy for which I have some sympathy, but I do not adopt it fully. My attitude is closer to Hepokoski’s: What the composers [Verdi and Puccini] have done with their transpositions is not to nullify the significance of key but to subordinate it to other considerations: to decide for one or another reason to allow the passage in question to participate in the web of tonalities in a different manner, but not one that is random or without tonally expressive implications.12

At the same time, I agree with Huebner and Lewin that listeners need not be paralyzed by the question “Did the composer intend this?” Donizetti might not have “intended” to end Maria di Rohan with a deceptive cadence, but thus he did end it; the intention probably came after the fact. The problem with authorial intent is that “intent” is too complex and slippery a concept for anyone, including the author, to define clearly. Distinguishing layers of revision for an opera is often a herculean task. Fortunately for the analyst, much of this work has already been done for Rossini and Verdi, and it is well underway for Bellini, Donizetti, and Meyerbeer. Modern critical editions, including extensive critical reports, began to appear for Rossini in 1979 and for Verdi in 1983. In both cases the late Philip Gossett was a key figure, especially in the editions’ early stages, but many scholars have been involved in the 10 Huebner, “Structural Coherence,” in The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, ed. Scott Balthazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 139–​53. 11 I am paraphrasing the stance taken by Lewin in “Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception,” Music Perception 3 (1986): 327–​92. See especially parts IV and V. 12 Hepokoski, “Verdi’s Composition of Otello: The Act II Quartet,” in Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, ed. Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 146; quoted in Powers, “One Half-​Step at a Time: Tonal Transposition and ‘Split Association’ in Italian Opera,” Cambridge Opera Journal 7 (1995): 135–​64; 137.

8  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera editorial work. The Donizetti critical edition began publishing in 1991; the Bellini and Meyerbeer editions were launched after 2000. For these composers’ operas, and for those Rossini and Verdi operas not yet available in critical editions, I have used the best sources I can find without leaving New York: early editions, including recent reprints; holographs and other manuscript scores published by Garland Press; and autograph and manuscript scores available online.

PART I

La Via Italiana The five chapters of part I explore past, present, and possible future approaches to the analysis of nineteenth-​century Italian opera. Nineteenth-​and early twentieth-​ century theories are addressed in some detail in part I and very little thereafter, with one important exception: Schenkerian analysis is used, in variously flexible forms, throughout this book. In my first draft, c­ hapter 1 carried the subtitle “I Don’t Think We’re in Vienna Any More.” Throughout these five chapters, I emphasize differences between Italian and German approaches to melody, harmony, rhythm, and form. Although I struck that subtitle, it summarizes a central theme of this book. This story is not set in Vienna—​nor in Leipzig or Berlin. Our action takes place, rather, in Naples, Milan, Venice, Rome, and Paris.

C HA P T E R

One

The Anvil Chorus

Martin Chusid has called Verdi’s Il trovatore “the quintessential Italian melodrama.”1 It was also the most popular Verdi opera during the composer’s lifetime. The opera was composed in 1852 and premiered in January 1853. This chapter is devoted to a single excerpt, lasting approximately eight minutes in performance. Based on a play by Antonio García Gutiérrez, Il trovatore tells the story of four characters during a civil war in fifteenth-​century Spain: the Count de Luna, a nobleman fighting on the loyalist side; Manrico, the troubadour of the opera’s title, an officer of ambiguous parentage fighting on the rebel side; Leonora, the noblewoman loved by both male antagonists; and Azucena, identified alternately in the libretto as a zingara or gitana (Roma woman), who stole and adopted Manrico when he was an infant. Life in Il trovatore is precarious and brutal. Leonora and Manrico are dead by the final curtain, and Azucena has been condemned to die at the stake. The Count, who survives, is unlucky nevertheless: he must live with the knowledge that he has murdered his own brother, Manrico, by mistake—​much as Azucena, in the opera’s backstory, mistakenly murdered her own son. The opera is divided into four “parts” or acts. Act 2 begins with a chorus of zingari (gypsies) into which a strophic song, sung by Azucena, is interpolated in a loose ABA arrangement. Verdi gave this number an unconventional title, Coro di Zingari e Canzone (“Chorus of gypsies and song”), but this title was known to few if any nineteenth-​century listeners. For one thing, neither the titles nor the boundaries of musical numbers were indicated in librettos that audiences purchased at the opera house. Printed librettos had the appearance of verse dramas, divided into acts and scenes. Scenes were delineated by the entrances and exits of characters, not by musical criteria of any kind. Music lovers who purchased the opera’s vocal score would have been only a little better informed. In Verdi’s autograph, Il trovatore is divided into fourteen numbers—​five in act 2, three in each of the remaining acts. His publisher, Ricordi, issued the vocal score in twenty-​two separate pieces between 31 January and 6 August 1853. These pieces make up the whole opera; no music is omitted. The opera could also be purchased in a single volume, at a bargain price of 40 francs (vs. 99 if all pieces were purchased separately). Arrangements for solo piano, piano four hands, piano with violin, and piano with flute also appeared.2 The Coro di Zingari e Canzone, a single number in Verdi’s autograph, comprised three numbers Chusid, Verdi’s Il trovatore: The Quintessential Italian Melodrama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012). 2 A full score was available for rental only, but orchestral parts could be purchased. 1

The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0002

12  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera in the vocal score: the Canzone appeared on 31 January, the surrounding choruses on 6 August. In arrangements without voice, the Canzone was combined with the following chorus, so the number was split into two pieces rather than three. The opening chorus soon became famous as a separate piece, popularly known as the “Anvil Chorus.” Only in Verdi’s autograph, not in any contemporary published score, is the Canzone grouped with the Anvil Chorus into a single number. This discrepancy merits a brief digression. Throughout this book, we will consider operatic numbers the way their composers conceived them, based on the evidence of autograph scores. This has become standard practice in recent scholarship, but it is a perspective that was unavailable even to educated musicians at the time. It is telling, for example, that in Abramo Basevi’s Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi, the most scholarly work of Verdi criticism published during the composer’s lifetime, numbers are referred to using the divisions and titles of the Ricordi vocal scores.3 Basevi was a Florentine critic, theorist, and composer with an impressive breadth of knowledge; he was one of the first Italians to know the music of Wagner, although he preferred Meyerbeer. Yet even Basevi seems to have been unaware of the discrepancy between Ricordi’s division of an opera and Verdi’s. This same discrepancy exists for every Italian composer discussed in this book. It seems that the composer’s conception of the operatic number enjoyed an esoteric or ideal existence in nineteenth-​century Italy, like the ideal score that I posited in the Introduction. The standardization of operatic forms in the first half of the nineteenth century, the primo ottocento, reduced the gap between the esoteric and exoteric status of numbers. For less standardized forms, such as that of the Coro di Zingari e Canzone, the gap actually widened as the century progressed. I have chosen to begin this book with the Coro di Zingari e Canzone because most readers will have heard it, and because its very familiarity can easily mask its strangeness: Julian Budden has called it “a deliberate essay in the bizarre.”4 Furthermore, a distinguished Italian critic of the time—​Basevi—​wrote about it, using concepts that are foreign to both nineteenth-​century German and twenty-​ first-​century American music theory. Analyzing the Anvil Chorus is not like analyzing a Schumann song or a Chopin etude, much less a sonata movement by Beethoven. The music proceeds from different assumptions. No obvious, ready-​ made analytical framework exists for this music, so a framework must be custom-​ made, using whatever concepts seem best suited to the musical object at hand. Basevi’s analysis offers us a beginning. Although the canzone is, musically, the most conventional part of the number, it is the only part that Basevi addresses in detail. Example 1.1 gives the melody of its first sixteen measures. Here is Basevi: If we now consider the first eight measures of this canzone and their possible harmonic relationships with the accompaniment, we will see that they could equally Abramo Basevi, Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (Florence, 1859). 4 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, Vol. 2: From Il trovatore to La forza del destino (London: Cassell, 1978), 81. 3

  The Anvil Chorus  T  13 Example 1.1.  Verdi, Il trovatore, Coro di Zingari e Canzone: Canzone, mm. 1–​16, melody only

unfold in either G major or E minor without distressing the ear. This prompts me to expand somewhat on the relationship of melody to harmony in general. The influence of keys on melody is immediately seen in the different scale degrees that notes assume within the different keys. Taking the present case as an example, B, the note with which the canzone begins, is the third of the key of G and the fifth of the key of E; now, a third does not have the same relative sound as a fifth, and with a simple change in the accompanying harmony the same note will lose its initial relative sound. It still has its absolute sound, but it is not from this that melodies are generated. . . .[I]‌t cannot be denied that a melody suggests its own harmony, which our ears long for without our realizing it. And truly, notes do not always derive their sound from their degree within the key, as Rousseau would have it, for in that case each note would be entitled to its own harmony as suggested by the key: at times they are rather appoggiaturas and passing notes, which have no meaning without reference to the harmony of the note onto which they resolve or pass. A melody would lose its character if these notes were harmonized as essential notes of the key. How does a melody suggest the most appropriate harmony? In various ways, but mainly by the natural tendency toward the easy and simple that is inherent in everything. In the canzone “Stride la vampa! la folla indomita” the last syllable, -​ta, is on an F♯, which can belong to the chord of B if the piece is to be in E minor, or just as well to the chord of D major if we take the melody to be in G. In the latter case, the leap of a fourth from this F♯ to the B at the beginning of the second phrase proves very awkward—​so much so that, in order to make it smoother, we tend to imagine the B itself in the preceding chord together with the F♯; we therefore establish E minor as the key that is of most use in pitching the intervals of this canzone. Verdi was thus well served by his musical instinct in framing it in that key.5

Basevi continues with further observations on the possible relationships between melody and harmony, but we will wait until the next chapter to examine them. What is striking about his discussion of Verdi’s canzone is that he takes its melody as fixed but its key as variable. Like Rameau in Code de musique pratique, Basevi considers harmonizing a given melody in two keys, a major key and its relative minor.6 But where Rameau considers only short melodic “cadences,” Abramo Basevi, The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, trans. Edward Schneider and Stefano Castelvecchi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 180–​81. 6 Rameau, Code de musique pratique (Paris, 1760), 149–​51 and ex. VI.e Q (Planches, p. 26). 5

14  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Basevi considers entire melodic phrases and their connections to each other. It is the connection between antecedent and consequent phrases of Verdi’s canzone that convinces Basevi to recognize E minor rather than G major as the appropriate key for this melody; until the leap from F♯ to B in mm. 8–​9, he takes the melody to express either key equally well. His attitude resembles that of a composer faced with the task of composing an accompaniment to a monophonic folk song, plainchant, or chorale. In the analysis that follows, I follow Basevi’s lead in considering the melody alone for the most part. I add the accompaniment only toward the end of the discussion. In lieu of a vocal score, example 1.2 presents the first A section—​everything up to the canzone—​reduced to a single staff without text.7 Example 1.3 is an analytical reduction of this melody, omitting the accompaniment in all but two measures (29–​ 30). There are eight phrases, designated (in example 1.3) by boxed numbers above the staff. Most phrases are four or eight measures long; measure numbers are given for the first complete measure in each phrase.8 Repeat signs carry their usual meaning. Note values indicate a rough hierarchy: half notes for relatively emphasized notes; quarter notes for notes less emphasized; unstemmed black notes for those still less emphasized. Eighth-​note flags are used for a few neighbor notes. The least emphasized notes, such as quick passing tones, are mostly omitted. Emphasis is defined in terms of a note’s length, metrical placement, and register (higher notes are favored),9 but also by its linear—​ especially stepwise—​ connection to surrounding notes. Slurs indicate stepwise motions or arpeggios that proceed without changing direction. Dotted ties indicate the retention of the same pitch, often across a phrase boundary. The chorus begins to sing in phrase 4. They sing in unison, with octave doublings, until phrase 8, where they divide into two parts moving in parallel thirds. Except for this final phrase, the entire chorus sings the melody; when they fall silent, the orchestra takes over. No distinction is made in example 1.3 between orchestra and chorus; the melody is treated as a single, continuous entity. The melody often exhibits a division into higher and lower registral strands. Wherever such a division exists, the strands are distinguished in example 1.3 by stem direction—​upward stems for the higher strand, downward stems for the lower. Registral continuity is a factor: both high and low pitches sometimes link to later pitches in the same register, following a more or less extended stretch of notes in the opposite register. I have highlighted the upper strand in the example. The melody begins and ends on E, in different registers. With few exceptions, the reduced melody shown in example 1.3 uses only pitches belonging to the one-​ sharp system, but there is a change to the natural system (no sharps or flats) for phrases 6–​8. The melody covers a two-​octave range, G3–​G5, but most of it lies within the octave E4–​E5. At first, the only extensions to this central octave are downward; when downward extensions are present, the melody never rises above B4. The melody thus begins with what turns out to be a secondary ambitus: B3–​B4 7 The chorus has two strophes, mm. 1–​48 and 49–​88. The second strophe is abbreviated by the omission of two four-​measure repetitions. 8 Budden (2:81) relates phrases 1 and 4 to phrases in the opera’s introduzione. 9 The metrical structure of this excerpt will be discussed in c­ hapter 4.

  The Anvil Chorus  T  15 Example 1.2.  Coro di Zingari, without text

16  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 1.2.  Continued

in phrase 1, widened to G3–​B4 in phrase 2. Because E4 begins and ends phrase 1, E seems to act as a modal final if not a tonic. Neither D nor D♯ appears among the principal notes in phrase 1, although D♯ is used ornamentally (see example 1.2). D♮ appears prominently in phrase 2, where D♯ is absent. Taking D♮ as belonging to the mode, and with the final falling in the middle of the ambitus, phrases 1–​2 seem to follow a plagal version of the natural minor scale on E, or, to use the terminology of Heinrich Glarean’s Dodecachordon (1547), the Hypoæolian mode transposed a perfect fifth higher.10 In phrase 1, the outer notes of slurs in example 1.3 outline an 10 Glarean’s twelve-​mode system was transmitted in a number of early nineteenth-​century sources; see, for example, the discussion of the modes that opens vol. 1 of Reicha’s Traité de haute composition

  The Anvil Chorus  T  17 Example 1.3.  Analytical reduction of the Coro

E minor triad, so a tonal interpretation of phrase 1 as being in E minor is plausible. Using the same criteria, phrase 2 also suggests E minor, because its slurs outline an E minor triad, G3–​E4–​G4–​B4 (reading from bottom to top). Yet with E falling only at the beginning of phrase 2, an E-​minor interpretation is less secure, and a G-​major interpretation is possible. With phrase 3 the ambitus shifts upward to the octave G4–​G5. B4, which links phrases 2 and 3, is repeated like a reciting tone (mm. 13–​14) before it descends to G4 at the end of the phrase. The same stepwise third, B4–​A4–​G4, was heard in the upper registral strand in phrase 1; the upper strand of phrase 2 performs the same third in retrograde. Phrase 3 traverses the ascending sixth B4–​G5 in two perfect fourths, B4–​E5 and D5–​G5, implicating both E and G as potential finals. Because the stepwise third B4–​A4–​G4 and its retrograde have been placed in contexts that suggest both E minor and G major, they express a tonal aporia that twentieth-​ century Russian theorists termed mutability. Mutability was originally conceived as a way of analyzing Russian music, but it is applicable to other idioms as well.11 musicale (Paris, 1824). On the persistence in Italian pedagogy of the harmonic and arithmetic divisions of the octave, see Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions, 150–​51. 11 Mutability has received renewed attention in recent years. See especially Daniil Zavlunov, “M. L. Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar (1836): An Historical and Analytic-​Theoretical Study” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2010). Zavlunov applies the concept of mutability to Glinka’s music while noting the influence of Bellini and other Italian composers.

18  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera G4 links phrases 3 and 4, ending the former and beginning the latter. Phrase 4 outlines two ascending sixths, G4–​E5 and F♯4–​D5, which are linked by the descending seventh E5–​F♯4. Only the first sixth, G4–​E5, is traversed wholly by step; this recalls, and retrogrades, the lower strand of phrase 2 an octave higher. Although phrase 4 covers less than an octave, its constituent intervals are wide enough to revive the separation into registral strands. Like the sixths themselves, the strands move by step: E5 to D5 and G4 to F♯4. The notes shown in example 1.3 weakly suggest G major, an implication that is confirmed in Verdi’s melody (mm. 24–​28) by the outlining of tonic and dominant chords of that key. Phrase 5 continues both strands from phrase 4. Uniquely, the accompaniment is called upon to continue the lower strand: F♯ descends chromatically to F♮–​E.12 A moment later the upper strand ascends D5–​E5, yielding, in staggered fashion, a Phrygian cadence on E. Phrase 5 is the only phrase to use both F♯ and F♮, and it also introduces G♯. Its successive four-​note descents may refer to the four-​note ascents of phrase 3, but this time neither interval is traversed diatonically, and neither outlines a perfect fourth. This is a moment of maximum instability, partly because of the chromaticism and partly because the implied harmony hovers on the dominant of an unrealized key, A minor. E5, the highest note of the melody’s central ambitus, receives considerable emphasis, as does the octave E4–​E5. Phrase 6 resolves the F question in favor of F♮, effecting a change from the one-​ sharp to the natural system. Phrase 6 also transfers the two-​note motive F♮–​E, first heard in phrase 5, to the upper octave, and it recalls the ascending sixth G–​E from phrase 4. E5 continues to be heavily emphasized, but the suggested key is now C major rather than A minor. In its upper strand, phrase 7 traverses the upper tetrachord of the E octave, which is now articulated at B. Neither F nor F♯ is sounded in the melody, but F♯ appears in the accompaniment (mm. 42–​43). Phrase 8 reproduces, a sixth higher, the upper strand of phrase 1: an ascent in two thirds, outlining a triad, followed by stepwise descent through a third. Not surprisingly, the triads involved are separated by a sixth: E minor in phrase 1, C major in phrase 8. The final descent recalls the lower strand of phrase 1, the descent from G to E now occurring an octave higher and with F♮ instead of F♯. The ascent within phrase 8, and the use of the natural system, summarize the trajectory of the melody as a whole: from low to high and from the one-​sharp to the natural system. The upward extension of the ambitus to G5, lightly touched upon in phrase 3, helps to solidify E5 as the melodic final by approaching it from above. Viewed without reference to keys, the melody outlines the authentic modal octave E4–​B4–​E5, although the full octave, articulated in this way, does not emerge until phrase 7. E4 is strongly emphasized in phrases 1 and 5; B4 in phrases 1, 2, 3, and 7; E5 in phrases 5 through 8. C seems to replace B as the melodic cofinal in phrases 6 and 8; C often serves this function in the Phrygian mode. B4 will be restored as cofinal in Azucena’s canzone (example 1.1). 12 There is a registral issue here. The choral tenors and basses sing F♯3, not F♯4 as shown in example 1.3. Cellos and bassoons continue the line in the same register, F3–​E3, while the double basses sound these notes an octave lower.

  The Anvil Chorus  T  19 Example 1.4.  Analytical reduction of the Canzone

Example 1.4 continues the reduction through the end of the canzone. As noted earlier, the canzone is stylistically and formally more conventional than the Coro di Zingari. If, disregarding ornamental notes, we follow the beginning and ending notes of slurs, we find close adherence to notes of the E minor triad except where the melody ends a stepwise descent on F♯. The perfect fourth B4–​F♯4 suggests a B harmony and, perhaps, B centricity. In context, however, B harmony acts as e:V, as Basevi noted. A few details of Azucena’s vocal line are noteworthy. B4 begins every phrase but two; in phrases 3 and 4, B4 is the phrase’s second main pitch, following E5. (Phrase 6 begins with the same fourth in the opposite direction.) Phrase 3 uses the diminished fourth G♯4–​C5, which was heard, in different tonal environments, in phrases 5 and 8 of the chorus. Another echo of the chorus is the Phrygian semitone E5–​F5 in phrase 6. This time the semitone moves away from the final rather than toward it. It is phrase 6 in which the canzone refers most explicitly to the coro. Basevi points out that both coro and canzone end with two vigorously articulated chords in the orchestra, which he terms strappate (“rips,” rendered as “claps” in the published translation). But the resemblance between the endings goes further than this. The melody’s final descent is G5–​F♯5–​E5, which closely recalls the chorus’s G5–​F♮5–​E5. The reprise of the chorus will restore F♮ to the scale. Sometimes our modal analysis conflicts with the evident keys of the accompaniment. In the coro, phrase 3 begins with an ascending fourth that suggests E as center, but the orchestra accompanies the fourth B–​E with a G major triad. In phrases 6 and 8, E is melodically central while the orchestra pounds out C major. In the canzone, the melody of phrase 3 outlines an E minor triad, but the orchestra begins and ends the phrase with C major chords.13 Viewed as a whole and with its accompaniment, the Coro di Zingari moves through four keys: E minor, G major, A minor, and C major. One key, A minor, is represented primarily by its dominant; the other keys are confirmed either by authentic cadences or by stepwise descents to the local 1̂. We can therefore conceive 13 The chord progression of phrase 3 (in the canzone) could also be described as two consecutive IV–​I progressions, the first in G major, the second in C major.

20  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 1.5.  A recurring progression in the Coro

the chorus’s mutability in terms of four triads—​E minor, G major, E major, and C major, of which three are tonicized and one (E major) is dominantized.14 E is common to all of these triads except G major; the conflict between the note E and the G major triad comes to the fore at the beginning of phrase 3 and, to a lesser degree, in phrase 4, where the ascending sixth G4–​E5 is heard in a G-​major context (example 1.3). The endings of coro and canzone are allied by their matching descents. If there is a central pitch-​class for the Coro di Zingari e Canzone it is E, the melodic final for both sections, rather than C, the last note in the orchestral bass. With E4–​E5 as the principal melodic ambitus for both coro and canzone—​ articulated mostly at B4, and with the change from the one-​sharp to the natural system—​we may say that the melody begins as transposed Aeolian (“E minor”) but ends as untransposed Phrygian. I have already suggested that the number’s low-​ register beginning evokes the Hypoæolian mode. The dramatic upward extension to G5 at the end suggests the rhetorical figure hyperbole as applied to music by the early seventeenth-​century theorist Joachim Burmeister: Burmeister uses this term to denote the upward transgression of a mode’s ambitus.15 Now that we are considering vertical as well as horizontal harmonies, we are in a better position to evaluate harmonic correspondences between different phrases and to address the unusual form of the Coro di Zingari. The most important harmonic correspondence is shown in example 1.5. Although phrase 2 of the coro is presented without chords, its last two notes, A4–​B4, are likely heard as 4̂–5̂ in E minor, implying a half cadence of the Phrygian type. I show C–​B as an implied bass line here, and I label the implied harmonies as e:iv6–​V. Phrase 3 opens (m. 13) with I of G major, harmonizing B4; the common-​tone link between phrases 2 and 3 is emphasized by unaccompanied octave leaps on B in the first violins (example 1.2, m. 12). Across the phrase boundary we hear e:V♯–​III, which in retrospect becomes G:III♯–​I. The same pattern is heard a perfect fourth higher at the juncture between phrases 5 and 6, where a Phrygian half cadence in A minor is followed by I of C major, harmonizing the latter key’s third degree; again the common-​tone link is underscored by unaccompanied octave leaps (mm. 32–​33). At both phrase junctures, but especially the latter one, the III♯–​I progression creates a powerful feeling of release. The two progressions shown in example 1.5 14 That these four triads do not belong to a single diatonic system disqualifies them from representing mutability according to some formulations of that concept. 15 Joachim Burmeister, Musica poetica, trans. Benito Rivera (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 182–​83.

  The Anvil Chorus  T  21 Example 1.6.  Refrains in La dame blanche (Boïeldieu) and Il trovatore (Verdi)

evoke all of the chorus’s four keys; the emphasized common tones, B4 and E5, are respectively the cofinal and final of the melodic mode. Azucena’s canzone has a simple ternary form, ABA, but the form of the coro—​ the Anvil Chorus—​is harder to describe. One unusual feature is the relation between the opening orchestral passage and the sung passages that follow. The orchestral music is not a prelude or introduction; it is neither accessory nor detachable. The voices enter not at the beginning of a melodic/​harmonic structure but in its fourth phrase, nearly halfway through.16 The Anvil Chorus probably reminded Verdi’s contemporaries of refrain forms in French opéra-​comique.17 Comparison could be made, for example, to the Ballade in Boïeldieu’s La dame blanche (1825), in which each minor-​key strophe leads to the major-​key refrain “La dame blanche vous regarde, la dame blanche vous entend” (“The White Lady sees you, the White Lady hears you”). Example 1.6 juxtaposes the refrains of Boïeldieu’s ballade and Verdi’s chorus. Notice the harmonic stasis in both refrains, and the shared emphasis on 3̂. Another formal model was not available to Verdi’s contemporaries, but it may be an even better fit: verse–​prechorus–​chorus.18 Walter Everett has claimed that this form was invented in 1964, but Verdi’s Coro di Zingari was composed 112 years earlier.19 In its first strophe, phrases 1–​4 represent the verse, but text is sung only to the repeated phrase 4. (In the second strophe, text is sung to phrase 1 and the unrepeated phrase 4.) Phrase 5 represents the prechorus, phrases 6–​8 the chorus. For the verse, different words are sung in each strophe, as one would expect; in the prechorus and chorus, roughly the same words are sung each time. This was not so 16 This fact is clarified in the chorus’s second strophe, where choral declamation accompanies the orchestral melody in phrase 1. 17 James Hepokoski explores the blend of French and Italian elements in Il trovatore in “Ottocento Opera as Cultural Drama: Generic Mixtures in Il trovatore,” in Verdi’s Middle Period, 1849–​1859, ed. Martin Chusid (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 147–​96. 18 Jay Summach, “The Structure, Function, and Genesis of the Prechorus,” Music Theory Online 17, no. 3 (October 2011). 19 Walter Everett, The Foundations of Rock (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 146. I am indebted to Mark Spicer for this reference.

22  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera in Salvadore Cammarano’s original libretto, in which only the words for the prechorus and the final shout of La zingarella! are the same both times. Verdi suppressed Cammarano’s penultimate line in strophe 2 in favor of repeating the corresponding line from strophe 1. Here is a comparison of the prechorus and chorus of both strophes—​first in Cammarano’s libretto, then in Verdi’s setting. For each strophe, the first line shown represents the prechorus. The line that Verdi suppressed is not nearly so gratifying to sing to the “anvil” theme, although it scans correctly. Cammarano, strophe 1 All’opra, all’opra! Dagli, martella. Chi del gitano i giorni abbella? La zingarella!

To work, to work! Go ahead, hammer! Who adorns the gypsy’s days? The gypsy girl!

Cammarano, strophe 2 All’opra, all’opra! Dagli, martella. Quale a noi splende propizia stella? La zingarella!

To work, to work! Go ahead, hammer! On which of us does the auspicious star shine? The gypsy girl!

Verdi, strophe 1 All’opra, all’opra! Dagli, martella. Chi del gitano i giorni abbella? La zingarella!

To work, to work! Go ahead, hammer! Who adorns the gypsy’s days? The gypsy girl!

Verdi, strophe 2 All’opra, all’opra! Chi del gitano i giorni abbella? La zingarella!

To work, to work! Who adorns the gypsy’s days? The gypsy girl!

As described by Drew Nobile, a prechorus normally begins on a chord of pre-​ dominant function such as ii or IV, and it ends on V. The following chorus begins on I and stays there, with little motion in harmony or melody.20 This is true of the refrain in Boïeldieu’s ballade, and it is true, at first, of the Anvil Chorus (harmonic and melodic activity increase later). In a song’s intensity curve, the chorus maintains a high, steady state; this criterion fits the Verdi perfectly, the Boïeldieu less well. An important difference between verse–​chorus and verse–​prechorus–​ chorus is that, in the latter form, the song’s structural goal is reached at the beginning of the chorus; in verse–​chorus forms, the goal is typically reached at the end.21 This criterion also fits the Verdi better than the Boïeldieu, whose refrain begins on 3̂ and ends on 1̂ (the end is not shown in example 1.6). In the Coro di Zingari the prechorus, phrase 5, is harmonized as a Phrygian half cadence in A minor. The chorus, phrases 6–​8, both begins and ends with E5 20 Drew Nobile, “A Structural Approach to the Analysis of Rock Music” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 2014). Hepokoski speaks of an “expanded-​stanza format” in which the third of four phrases “represents a strong dominant preparation” and the fourth phrase “gives the impression of a rebeginning or second launch at the moment of the refrain (where a literal refrain exists).” Hepokoski, “Ottocento Opera,” 162. Hepokoski’s “strong dominant preparation” corresponds to the prechorus described by Nobile. Hepokoski relates this form to the verse–​chorus forms of later popular music, but he does not speak of a prechorus. 21 Nobile, “A Structural Approach,” ­chapter 5.

  The Anvil Chorus  T  23 over C:I. A dominant-​to-​tonic progression links prechorus and chorus, but the two chords belong to different (relative) keys.22 The music reaches peak intensity with phrase 6, where the full orchestra is accompanied by hammering on anvils. Intensity diminishes markedly at the beginning of phrase 8, where the chorus sings alone, but it resumes its peak at the phrase’s end, where Basevi’s “ripped” chords are accompanied by two final strokes of the hammer. Because the chorus both begins and ends on E5 over C major, the melodic/​harmonic goal is reached at the chorus’s beginning, as Nobile describes. Further supporting this reading of the form is the abbreviated reprise of the Coro di Zingari: only the prechorus and chorus return, not the verse. Once Azucena has finished her canzone, the gypsies and Azucena repeatedly intone the descending tetrachord E–​D–​C–​B, as all comment on the sadness of her tale. This is followed by a passage of recitative in G major, during which an older gypsy tells his companions to go to the nearest village to earn their daily bread. Once the recitative has reached a cadence in G major, the key of the original phrase 4, the orchestra enters with phrase 5 at its original allegro tempo. As the gypsies exit, they sing phrases 6–​8, the chorus, in a fadeout ending, followed by a few C major chords in the strings, marked ppp and morendo (dying away). Neither in its harmony nor in its form is the Coro di Zingari e Canzone a normal piece of music by the standards conventionally applied to mid-​nineteenth-​ century music. To analyze it, we have had recourse to analytical concepts developed for other kinds of music, from Renaissance to rock. Verdi’s chorus is something of an outlier even for Italian opera, but it is far from unique: its tonal trajectory turns out to be strikingly similar to that of the second-​act finale in Bellini’s Norma, which we will analyze in ­chapter 9. Nineteenth-​century Italian opera is simply different from the German music that theorists usually study. It is composed differently, and it must be analyzed differently.23 Reasons for the differences between Italian and German music of this period are complex, and we cannot do them justice here. Nevertheless, a few remarks are in order. For most of the eighteenth century, German composers looked to Italy and France for guidance; by the end of the nineteenth century the situation was precisely reversed. The period with which this book is concerned lies in between. Nineteenth-​century Italian composers knew and admired the chamber music of Haydn and Mozart, and Italy remained open to French influence throughout the century. But the rise of German instrumental music from Beethoven onward left 22 In his Harmonielehre (1906), Schenker describes III♯–​I as a tonicizing progression that acts much like V–​I. This conception of III♯–​I disappears from Schenker’s later writings. See also the discussion of III♯ as a dominant substitute in David Damschroder, Thinking about Harmony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 218–​19. 23 An exception is the romance “Im Mohrenland” from Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which moves through multiple keys in a comparable manner; see Rothstein, “Common-​Tone Tonality in Italian Romantic Opera: An Introduction,” Music Theory Online 14, no. 1 (2008). The strophic romance and canzone represent a French element in eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century opera, so there is a cultural link between the two strophic songs. More important, both depict marginalized and Orientalized communities: Moors for Mozart, gypsies for Verdi. Both pieces invoke the Phrygian mode, often connected with the music of Moorish Spain.

24  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera little mark in Italy (with the partial exception of Florence) until the 1860s, after the period covered by this book. Italy remained devoted to vocal music, while instrumental music actually declined in importance. Italian music publishing was decades behind its French, German, and Austrian counterparts, and Italian publishers focused mostly on opera, especially after 1820.24 Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi all composed instrumental music, but mostly as student exercises or occasional pieces not intended for publication. Much of this music went unpublished until the twentieth century. To an Italian music-​lover of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, “German music” meant Haydn, Mozart, Meyerbeer, and perhaps Weber’s Der Freischütz. When an Italian critic or composer of this period refers to contemporary German music, it is invariably Meyerbeer who is meant.25 Haydn’s Creation and Mozart’s Don Giovanni were known and admired in the Austrian-​ ruled north, and some dilettanti played their string quartets in private houses, but their symphonies were unknown because there was no public venue for symphonies in Italy. Opera, on the other hand, was enjoyed by a larger and more diverse audience than ever before. Another factor was the growing gulf, in Germany, between art music and music for casual entertainment. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that this split hardly existed in Italy before 1860. Serious opera, known as melodramma, was regarded as both high art and an evening’s entertainment. In this respect, Italy continued and even intensified the late eighteenth-​century tendency to mix high and low artistic registers, while German critics increasingly enforced their separation. As Budden put it, “Once the folk or popular element in Italian opera came to dominate, the split with Germany opened wide.”26 Most germane to the concerns of this book are differences between the theoretical and pedagogical traditions of various European countries; these help to explain the differing mindsets of composers. These differences are the subject of the next chapter.

24 Ricordi published some of Paganini’s instrumental music, but no new works appeared after 1820. 25 Bellini seems to have known Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, because he paraphrases its opening in three operas: the revised Bianca e Fernando (1828), Zaira (1829), and Norma (1831). The sonata was not published in Italy until 1842. See Giorgio Sanguinetti, “Di una ricorrente reminiscenza beethoveniana in Bellini,” Bollettino di studi belliniani 5 (2019): 55–​65. Sanguinetti speculates that Bellini, a southerner, may have encountered Beethoven’s sonata in Milan in 1827. 26 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:11.

C HA P T E R

Two

Theoretical Contexts I Nineteenth-​Century Theory

We have seen that an excerpt from Verdi’s Il trovatore does not adhere to constructive principles that theorists are accustomed to find in music written at that time. Both Verdi’s music and the prejudice of theorists are responsible for this mismatch. As I suggested in the preface, the methods and habits of American theorists were formed by the study of German music, especially instrumental music, and by theories created to explain that music. Our study of the Anvil Chorus suggests that we need to look further afield. This chapter compares the teaching of harmony and rhythm in three parts of Europe during the period covered by this book: Italy, both north and south; France, including French-​speaking parts of present-​day Belgium; and Germany (Austria is treated more briefly). Following a general introduction to Italian theoretical traditions, separate sections are devoted to early and late portions of our half-​century, using 1840 as a dividing line.

Italian Theory: An Overview Some readers may assume that, by the time of Il trovatore, Verdi would have been exposed to “progressive” music from beyond the Alps: the music of Beethoven’s late period; Wagner’s operas through Lohengrin; the piano music of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt. To the best of my knowledge, Verdi knew none of this music before the 1860s, although he knew some pieces by Beethoven and Schubert as early as the 1840s.1 When, in 1869, the Milanese critic Filippo Filippi wrote that a melody from La forza del destino reminded him of Schubert’s Ave Maria, Verdi wrote to Filippi that he had heard Schubert’s song many years before but did not remember it.2 The earliest reference to Beethoven in Verdi’s letters dates from 1871; thereafter he refers several times to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the finale 1 Beethoven and Schubert are listed by Roberta Montemorra Marvin among the “modern” composers whose music Verdi assigned for study to his pupil Emanuele Muzio; the most concentrated period of Muzio’s study was the mid-​1840s. Marvin, Verdi the Student—​Verdi the Teacher (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 2010), 36. 2 The letter is quoted in Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 2:443. Filippi was referring to Leonora’s act 4 aria, “Pace, mio Dio.” The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0003

26  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera of which he disliked. It was not until 1869 that Verdi sent for a copy of Wagner’s prose works—​in French, because he did not read German.3 In 1871, Verdi heard a Wagner opera for the first time; it was Lohengrin, and it was the first performance of any Wagner opera anywhere in Italy. (Tristan received its first Italian performance in 1888.) Oper und Drama did not appear in Italian until 1894, although some of its ideas had spread through the musical press.4 Verdi’s relation to the German tradition became a pressing issue by the time of Aida, but at the time of Il trovatore the only living German composer he had on his mind was Meyerbeer. The music of Chopin and Liszt seems never to have caught his attention.5 There was a canon of “immortal” composers in nineteenth-​century Italy, although by Verdi’s time some its members were praised rather than performed. The Italian canon overlapped not at all with Schenker’s; it did not even include Domenico Scarlatti, the only Italian composer to pass Schenker’s muster. Italian musicians gave pride of place to the Neapolitan masters from Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–​1725) to Giovanni Paisiello (1740–​1816) and Domenico Cimarosa (1749–​ 1801). Among composers of instrumental music, Arcangelo Corelli (1653–​1713) was deemed a classic, and his music continued to be studied by young composers, including Verdi’s pupil Emanuele Muzio. Of composers active during the Napoleonic era, Fernando Paër (1771–​1839), Gaspare Spontini (1774–​1851), and the Bavarian-​born Simon Mayr (1763–​1845) were admired, but these decades were viewed as less illustrious than any in the preceding century. The tradition had declined, and Rossini was seen as responsible for its restoration. All the Italian composers discussed in this book were regarded as canonic, even during their lifetimes. This was especially true of Rossini, Bellini, and Verdi, but Donizetti and Mercadante were also considered composers of permanent value. In addition to a compositional canon, Italy boasted a pedagogical canon that was similarly founded on the Neapolitan school. This pedagogical tradition has received a surge of attention in English-​language scholarship since the publication of Robert Gjerdingen’s Music in the Galant Style.6 Three recent books have shed further light on Italian pedagogy: Nicholas Baragwanath’s The Italian Traditions and Puccini and The Solfeggio Tradition, and Giorgio Sanguinetti’s The Art of Partimento.7 Partimento refers to the use of a more or less modified basso continuo, either figured or unfigured,

3 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 2:45. 4 Julian Budden, “Wagnerian Tendencies in Italian Opera,” in Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 299–​332. Wagner urged Basevi to read Oper und Drama, but Basevi preferred Meyerbeer. 5 Verdi’s self-​proclaimed ignorance of the repertoire was a means of creative self-​protection. In an 1876 letter, he laments that the composer Ponchielli “is no longer young . . . and has seen and heard too much. You know my views on hearing too much”; quoted in Mary Jane Phillips-​Matz, Verdi: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 627. See also Luigi Magnani, “L’ ‘ignoranza musicale’ di Verdi e la biblioteca di Sant’Agata,” Atti del IIIo Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1974), 250–​57. 6 Robert Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 7 Nicholas Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions and Puccini; Baragwanath, The Solfeggio Tradition: A Forgotten Art of Melody in the Long Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Giorgio Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  27 to teach what we would now describe as harmony and counterpoint, including imitation and fugue. Combined with pedagogical tools such as solfeggio—​the composition and singing of accompanied melodies—​partimento formed the basis of training for Italian singers, instrumentalists, and composers from the end of the seventeenth century to the last decades of the nineteenth. Until recently, American theorists knew of the partimento tradition mostly from eighteenth-​century German sources such as Friedrich Erhard Niedt’s Musicalische Handleitung (“The musical guide,” 1700–​ 1710) and Johann David Heinichen’s Der General-​ Bass in der Composition (“Thoroughbass in composition,” 1728). These sources understate the improvisational and formulaic elements in partimento realization.8 “Improvisation” and “formula” should be understood as complementary, not opposed concepts: as Gjerdingen and Sanguinetti have pointed out, the successful realization of a partimento is based on the recognition of formulas that the student would have learned in earlier study. The partimento tradition was developed above all for use in the Neapolitan conservatories, where children and adolescents studied music for a period of up to eight years, sometimes longer. By the late eighteenth century, a split began to develop between Naples and the north of Italy, where the theories of Rameau had an impact on practical as well as speculative thinkers.9 Neapolitan teachers such as Fedele Fenaroli (1730–​1818) and Niccolò Zingarelli (1752–​1837) continued to transmit the partimento tradition much as it had been handed down by Neapolitan masters such as Francesco Durante (1684–​1755). Beginning with Giovanni Battista Martini (1706–​1784), masters in northern cities such as Bologna and Milan began to apply Rameau’s fundamental bass to partimenti, resulting in a theoretical hybrid that is evident, for example, in the writings of Bonifazio Asioli (1769–​1832), the leading north-​Italian theorist of the early nineteenth century. We will consider Asioli’s writings later in this chapter. A detailed account of the partimento tradition is beyond the scope of this book. Here I wish merely to emphasize those aspects of Italian pedagogy that may have fostered distinctive features of Italian operatic music in the early and middle nineteenth century. Compared to German and French pedagogy, the most striking aspects of the Neapolitan tradition are its reliance on rote learning, its preference for rules of thumb over rationalized theory, and the almost complete absence of published sources. For the most part, both precepts and exercises were transmitted orally and through manuscripts. Even the best-​ known collection of Neapolitan partimenti, Fenaroli’s, was published not in Naples but in Paris, on the initiative of Fenaroli’s student Emanuele Imbimbo. This 1814 publication closely followed Alexandre-​Étienne Choron’s massive Principes de composition des Écoles d’Italie (“Principles of composition of the Italian schools,” Paris, 1808), which advocates Italian methods. 8 Mattheson’s Exemplarische Organisten-​Probe (1719) is closer to the partimento tradition in this respect. 9 Speculative theory flourished mostly in Padua, where Giuseppe Tartini (1692–​1770) and Francesco Antonio Vallotti (1697–​1780) were active.

28  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Less widely recognized, even today, is the relation between partimento and cantus firmus composition or canto fermo. The three principal types of bass formula in the partimento tradition were scales, sequences, and cadences. Bass scales generally involve the Rule of the Octave (regola dell’ottava), which has been credited to the French guitarist François Campion (1685–​ 1747). Sequences, known in Italy as “bass motions” (moti del basso), usually involve alternating intervals, such as “falling by fourth and rising by step,” the so-​called romanesca bass.10 Although the regola dell’ottava and moti del basso were defined, in their most basic forms, as belonging to the bass voice, both were treated in practice as cantus firmi, which could be placed in any voice. Common moti del basso were used as vocal exercises for all voice types, including sopranos.11 Thus the regola and the moti were not treated exclusively, or even primarily, as a series of chords, despite the incursion of Ramellian fundamental-​bass thinking into north-​Italian teaching methods. As Baragwanath makes clear, ascending and descending scales formed the backbone of many improvised and written solfeggi, improvised and written counterpoint exercises, and improvised and written realizations of partimenti. (Written partimento realizations, with each voice notated on its own staff, were called disposizioni.) Unlike the melodically distinctive cantus firmi of the Fuxian tradition, itself based on Italian methods from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century Italian teachers used stock melodic formulas as generic cantus firmi. Baragwanath analyzes a number of nineteenth-​century Italian operatic melodies, up to and including Puccini’s, as lightly disguised solfeggi based on diatonic scales.12 An important consequence of the cantus firmus approach is that a polyphonic texture may be formed around any voice, not only the bass. Whereas Rameau’s fundamental bass and the north-​German figured-​bass tradition begin from a sounding or conceptual bass line, the survival of the cantus firmus method in Italy—​and, to a lesser degree, in France and Austria—​meant that musical textures could be conceptualized not only from the bass upward but also from the soprano downward or from an inner voice outward. Suggestive in this regard are the Contrappunti da due a otto parti sopra la scala ascendente e discendente (“Counterpoints from two to eight parts on the ascending and descending scale”) by Rossini’s teacher Stanislao Mattei (1750–​1825), used by Verdi in his teaching of Emanuele Muzio.13 Example 2.1, also reproduced by Baragwanath, shows one of Mattei’s simpler examples. The key is C minor despite the two-​flat key signature; the scale is in the soprano. The bass is a sequence, alternating a step up and a third 10 Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions, 160–​62; Sanguinetti, 135–​57. 11 Carlo Gervasoni (La scuola della musica, 1800) gives scales and moti as unaccompanied exercises for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices. See Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions, 167 and 335n74. In The Solfeggio Tradition, Baragwanath emphasizes (288–​97) that keyboard bass lines were conceptualized in the same way as vocal melodies, with which they could often be exchanged in invertible counterpoint. 12 Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions, 268–​82. 13 See c­ hapter 2 of Marvin, Verdi the Student—​Verdi the Teacher. An early version of Marvin’s chapter appeared as an article, “Verdi Learns to Compose: The Writings of Bonifazio Asioli,” Studi musicali 36 (2007): 469–​90.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  29 Example 2.1.  Padre Mattei, Practica d’accompagnamento e contrappunto, vol. 2: Counterpoint on a descending scale*

* from Nicholas Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions and Puccini, p. 259 (­example 6.1). © 2011 by Nicholas Baragwanath. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of Indiana University Press. down, with a cadence at the end; its first note, C, is elaborated by an ascending scale. The alto uses a different contrapuntal pattern, a canon by syncopation, to accompany the scale. As Baragwanath describes, this is “not so much an exercise to be performed from the page as it was an idealized version or end-​product of a particular learning process,” which would, in its earlier stages, have had the maestro leading his students through improvised vocal counterpoints set against the scale.14 The process that Baragwanath describes recalls the witty Alternativo in Haydn’s String Quartet in E♭ Major, op. 76, no. 6, which may be an affectionate parody of just this kind of teaching. Haydn, too, had a Neapolitan teacher, Nicola Porpora, whom he credited with giving him “the true fundamentals of composition.”15 It is not too much of a leap, I think, to view the melody-​oriented coherence of the Anvil Chorus, with its fixed melodic final amid freely fluctuating keys, as a result of Verdi’s Italian training. It would have been difficult for a composer trained in Leipzig or Berlin to have composed such a piece. In the next two sections we will consider what amount to snapshots, rather than comprehensive surveys, of French, Italian, and German theory before 1840. These snapshots are necessarily selective; in many cases I consider only one or two ideas from a given theorist. All the French authors discussed below were known in Italy, at least in the north. Among Italians I focus on Bonifazio Asioli, who taught at the Milan Conservatory and was receptive to French ideas. By contrast, German theory was hardly known in Italy during the first half of the century. I have chosen a single German theorist, Gottfried Weber, because he was influential in Germany, remains relatively well known, and introduced new ideas about harmony and 14 Baragwanath, 258–​63. 15 See Felix Diergarten, “The True Fundamentals of Composition: Haydn’s Partimento Counterpoint,” Eighteenth-​Century Music 8 (2011): 53–​75.

30  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera rhythm. In both areas, Weber’s ideas contrast sharply with contemporary Italian teachings.

Theories of Harmony, 1800–​1840 Within Europe, no national tradition is ever hermetic, but some are more open to outside influence than others. Southern Italy, centering on Naples, had a relatively closed pedagogical tradition in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At the other extreme, Paris was extremely cosmopolitan, partly because so many of the composers and teachers who worked there came from elsewhere. Cherubini and Spontini were Italians, Meyerbeer a Prussian from Berlin. Anton Reicha was Bohemian-​born and German-​trained. Choron was French but championed Italian methods. Daniel Jelensperger, a pupil of Reicha, was Alsatian, his theoretical style largely German.16 The French-​born Charles-​Simon Catel (1773–​1830) became the first professor of harmony at the newly formed Paris Conservatory, where his Traité d’harmonie (1802) was adopted as that institution’s first harmony textbook. Although Catel’s treatise uses Rameau’s fundamental bass to a slight extent, it is generally seen as a break from the Ramellian tradition and the beginning of a distinctively nineteenth-​ century school of French harmonic theory.17 It is interesting, therefore, to note that Catel’s treatise is full of examples of the regola dell’ottava (règle d’octave), often elaborated by suspensions; moti del basso, which Catel calls by the equivalent French term, mouvemens de la basse; and cadence formulas straight out of the partimento tradition. Unlike Italian partimenti, Catel’s examples are fully realized in 3–​5 voices, like Italian disposizioni; many include imitation. Catel’s last extended example, from a chapter on the figuring of basses, is made up of entirely of partimento formulas, ending with a modified version of Gjerdingen’s Quiescenza schema.18 Reicha’s writings on harmony are an odd amalgam of the systematic and the practical, but they show little affinity with Italian methods; his harmony treatise presents the règle d’octave in passing but minimizes its significance.19 Surprisingly, Reicha opens his treatise with a chapter on the church modes. He presents four-​, eight-​, and twelve-​mode systems, followed by the eight nouveaux [!]‌ tons d’église or church keys, which he equates with certain modes, though not on a one-​to-​ one basis. He then discusses how one might add chordal accompaniments to 16 Jelensperger’s harmony treatise receives extensive discussion in Damschroder, Thinking about Harmony. 17 See Renate Groth, Die französische Kompositionslehre des 19. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983). 18 Catel, Traité de l’harmonie, 68; Gjerdingen, 181–​95. See also Sanguinetti, “Galanterie romantiche: La ‘Quiescenza’ nell’Ottocento,” in Musica come pensiero e come azione, ed. Marina Vaccarini et al. (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2014), 345–​61. 19 Reicha, Cours de composition musicale, ou Traité complet et raisonné d’harmonie pratique (Paris, 1818). Reicha’s dismissal of the règle d’octave is paraphrased by the late nineteenth-​century Italian theorist Cesare De Sanctis in a passage quoted in Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions, 152–​53.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  31 plainchants, depending on whether the chant is placed in the soprano or the bass. Special attention is given to modulations and final cadences that are possible in each mode. Reicha’s attention to the modes is more than the eccentricity of an antiquarian. Modal thinking never died out in Catholic parts of Europe; for church musicians, accompanying plainchant was a very practical concern. Equally interesting is Reicha’s use of modal cantus firmi to demonstrate the use of non-​harmonic tones in multiple voices simultaneously—​a phenomenon comparable to, and perhaps inspired by, the combined species presented by Fux in Gradus ad Parnassum. For simultaneous passing tones, Reicha offers (22) a four-​part setting of a Phrygian cantus firmus transposed to F♯ with a signature of two sharps; the cantus firmus appears in the soprano. He illustrates simultaneous passing tones and suspensions with a six-​voice setting (24–​25) of a Dorian cantus firmus transposed to C with a signature of two flats; the cantus firmus is in the first alto, and Reicha comments that it will blend imperceptibly into the overall sound unless it is reinforced by instruments (he recommends winds). Later (221–​24) he discusses how to add a canon to a plainchant cantus firmus. In volume 2, much of which is devoted to fugue, he discusses fugues written around a cantus firmus, a topic covered a generation earlier by the Viennese theorist Johann Georg Albrechtsberger.20 The cantus firmus that Reicha uses for this purpose is not a Catholic chant but a Lutheran chorale, “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern,” set by Reicha’s pupils Daniel Jelensperger and Louis-​Auguste Seuriot.21 Unlike Catel’s harmonic theories, Reicha’s were little influenced by Italy; what influence there was seems to have flowed in the opposite direction. Baragwanath claims that the importation to Italy of Reicha’s harmonic treatises constituted a “turning point in the Italian traditions” in the direction of Rameau’s fundamental-​ bass theory, superseding partimento methods, and he locates Reicha’s influence specifically in Asioli’s posthumously published Il maestro di composizione.22 Baragwanath’s claim is surely exaggerated, however, because similar thinking pervades Asioli’s 1813 Trattato di armonia, which predates all of Reicha’s major treatises. While Asioli’s views of harmony were based on Ramellian chordal inversion, his ideas resemble Marpurg’s and Vogler’s more closely than Reicha’s or Rameau’s. Like Marpurg, Asioli stacks chords in thirds up to the thirteenth; like Marpurg and Vogler, he allows ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths to participate in inversion. Asioli is also more literal-​minded than Rameau, Kirnberger, Reicha, or Weber in determining chord fundamentals. A diminished triad on the leading tone, for example, always has the leading tone as its fundamental, not the dominant; the “Italian” augmented-​sixth chord has as its fundamental the raised fourth degree of the scale, not the absent second degree. Asioli treats as a root-​position seventh chord the so-​called stationary seventh, even though the seventh is doubled

20 Albrechtsberger, Gründliche Anweisung zur Composition (Leipzig, 1790). 21 Reicha, Traité de haute composition musicale (Paris, 1824–​1826), vol. 2, 212–​20. 22 Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions, 152. Asioli’s treatise, planned in three volumes, was published in four (Milan, n.d.).

32  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera and does not resolve.23 Kirnberger, Reicha, and Weber understood this formation as a passing event without a fundamental.24 The similarities of Asioli’s harmonic ideas to Vogler’s suggest a common source: the Paduan theorist Francesco Antonio Vallotti (1697–​1780), Vogler’s teacher. Asioli’s nineteenth-​century biographer, Antonio Coli, also connects Asioli with Vallotti.25 Whatever the pedigree of Asioli’s ideas, Baragwanath exaggerates when he says that Asioli’s teachings and Reicha’s texts supplanted partimento methods. Evidence that partimento flourished throughout the first half of the century, even in northern Italy, is provided by Baragwanath himself and by Verdi’s syllabus for Emanuele Muzio.26 The harmonic theories of Jérôme-​Joseph de Momigny (1762–​1842) are highly original, but they had little impact in France or, so far as I am aware, in Italy. Momigny’s rhythmic theory, which does seem to have had some resonance in Italy, is discussed in the next section. Gottfried Weber (1779–​1839), a north-​German pupil of Vogler, is famous for developing Vogler’s Roman-​numeral notation into a comprehensive method of harmonic analysis, for his concept of multivalence (Mehrdeutigkeit), and for his table of key relations. These elements of his theory were all in place by 1817, when he published the first edition of his principal treatise, Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst (“Attempt at a systematic theory of composition”). The treatise was revised repeatedly over the next fifteen years. It was translated into French, English, Dutch, and Danish, but not into Italian. In the second edition of the Versuch (1824), Weber describes thoroughbass as a mere notational shorthand, helpful when one needs to become acquainted quickly with an unfamiliar composition. He expresses a strong dislike of thoroughbass accompaniment in practice, complaining that it is obtrusive and results in faulty parallels against the written parts. At best it is useful for the accompaniment of chorales in church.27 By the third edition (1830–​1832), the discussion of thoroughbass has tripled in length, and Weber admits its usefulness for accompanying recitativo secco and solfeggi.28 It would seem that, between 1824 and 1832, Weber learned something about Italian musical practice. Nevertheless, Weber lies as far from the partimento tradition as can be imagined. His attitude toward the church modes is dismissive.29 23 Asioli, 1:21 (ex. 15) and 4:15. Asioli’s example shows D3–​C4–​F4–​C5, passing between C3–​C4–​E4–​ C5 and E3–​C4–​G4–​C5. 24 Kirnberger, “The True Principles for the Practice of Harmony,” trans. David Beach and Jürgen Thym, Journal of Music Theory 23 (1979): 191–​92, Fig. 42; Reicha, Cours de composition musicale, 75; Weber, Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst, 3rd ed. (Mainz, 1830–​1832), 3:119–​ 20 (Fig. 259). Kirnberger states that the stationary seventh may only fall on weak beats, but Asioli, Reicha, and Weber show it on the downbeat of a measure. See also Damschroder, Thinking about Harmony, 117–​21. 25 Coli, Vita di Bonifazio Asioli da Correggio (Milan, 1834), 62. Coli’s biography was reprinted as a preface to vol. 4 of Asioli’s Il maestro di composizione. 26 Marvin, “Verdi Learns to Compose,” 474–​78. 27 Weber, Versuch, 2nd ed., 4:133–​39. 28 Weber, Versuch, 3rd ed., 4:123–​46. 29 Weber, Versuch, 2nd ed., 4:140–​64; 3rd ed., 4:150–​73.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  33 Except in his brief but important treatment of rhythm, Weber’s approach to music is relentlessly harmonic. It is oriented toward chords, how chords define keys, and how the keys in a piece relate to each other. He is a firm believer in the virtue of tonal unity, even where entire operas are concerned (he cites four of Mozart’s), but he acknowledges that some pieces begin away from their main key. As Janna Saslaw and others have emphasized, Weber’s approach to harmony is based on the psychology of an attentive listener trying to make sense of a work’s harmonies in real time. His meticulous tracking of key implications at the beginning of Mozart’s “Dissonant” Quartet (C major, K. 465) is remarkable.30 At the similarly ambiguous beginning of Haydn’s Quartet op. 33, no. 1 (B minor), Weber calculates the tonal implications of each vertical sonority in turn, assigning as many as three different meanings to a single sonority.31

Theories of Rhythm, 1800–​1840 The most original theorists of rhythm in early nineteenth-​century France were Momigny and Reicha. Reicha’s major work in this area, Traité de mélodie (1814), has been translated into English and is well known to scholars. It was also the first of Reicha’s treatises to be translated into Italian (1829). Unlike most German writings on phrase rhythm, Reicha’s treatise is devoted mostly to vocal rather than instrumental music. Emphasizing the role of symmetry in melodic construction, Reicha divides melodies on the basis of cadential punctuation, with “cadence” defined as a melodic event long before harmony is brought into the picture. Both Momigny and Reicha follow a French tradition of regarding single-​voice melodic progressions as cadences.32 Reicha classifies melodic cadences as either quarter, half, or full. A passage that ends with a full cadence is called a period, but when a period ends in a non-​tonic key its cadence, though nominally full, is described as a three-​quarters cadence. A period is usually divided into members or rhythms; a rhythm of four measures—​the typical length—​is labeled rhytme de quatre mesures in French, ritmo di quattro battute in Italian. The strength of a cadence is often determined by its position within a period, not by its pitch content alone. What appears from its pitch content to be a full cadence may act as a half or even a quarter cadence if it appears early in a period.33 In a supplement at the end of the book, Reicha discusses the coordination of melodic with harmonic cadences. This separation between melody and harmony—​ the view of each domain as partly independent of the other—​is consonant with the

30 Weber’s analysis appears in Ian Bent, ed., Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004–​2005), 1:157–​82. 31 Weber, 2nd and 3rd editions, Fig. 380. 32 An earlier example is Charles Masson, Nouveau traité des règles pour la composition de la musique (Paris, 1697). 33 Reicha, Treatise on Melody, trans. Peter M. Landey (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2000), 16–​17 and 125 (examples K and L).

34  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 2.2.  Reicha, Traité de mélodie: A passage from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, re-​notated

work of other French and Italian theorists, including Momigny, Asioli, and Fétis. It stands in contrast to nineteenth-​century German theory, which rarely grants such independence to melody. An important issue throughout our exploration of rhythmic theory will be the metric placement of cadences and other resting points. Reicha is conservative on this issue: he writes that “melody may cadence in a perceptible manner only on the strong beats of the measure” (emphasis in original).34 Measures of  ,  , and  contain two strong beats, according to Reicha, but the first strong beat is stronger than the second. For this reason, a cadence on beat 1 is more effective than a cadence on what Reicha terms the “secondary strong beat,” such as beat 3 in a measure of  . 35 Reicha addresses meter on a larger scale—​what today is termed hypermeter—​ only once in this treatise, and then only indirectly. In an analysis of Cherubino’s aria “Non so più” from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Reicha seeks to demonstrate that a seven-​measure phrase is “really” a regular phrase of eight measures. Because the aria is in alla breve and the tempo is allegro assai, Reicha recommends that one imagine the phrase in measures twice as long at a somewhat slower tempo:  measures in allegro moderato (example 2.2).36 Reicha’s point is made by the rests that he adds after the cadential note, E♭: these rests complete the phrase’s claimed length of eight alla breve measures. Reicha omits the Italian text from this illustration, but it is included elsewhere in his analysis. It is a couplet: Che il suon de’ vani accenti Portano via con sé. 34 Reicha, Treatise on Melody, 11. 35 Reicha, Treatise on Melody, 11. 36 No meter signature appears in the reduction, but  can be inferred.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  35 The first two words, “che il,” are elided into a single syllable. In his hypothetical version, Reicha places the bar lines so that, following his own principle, the final cadence falls on beat 1 of a measure. This means, however, that the resting point at the fermata, on the accented word “sé,” falls on beat 3, the secondary strong beat; so does the accented syllable in “accenti.” As we shall see in ­chapter 4, both of these metric placements violate the norms of Italian text-​setting as articulated by Asioli and followed almost invariably by Mozart.37 Although Momigny’s magnum opus, the Cours complet d’harmonie et de composition (“Complete course of harmony and composition,” 1803–​1806), did not circulate widely even in France, his later book La seule vraie théorie de la musique (“The only true theory of music,” 1821) appeared in an Italian translation in 1823. Its section on rhythm and meter seems to have made an impression on Asioli, who is listed as one of the book’s subscribers. Momigny’s conception of meter is based on what he calls the “natural measure,” which unites an upbeat to the following downbeat; he also refers to this union as a “cadence” or “proposition.” In a “binary” or two-​note cadence, the upbeat note, or levé, is labeled 1 in Momigny’s examples; the downbeat note, or frappé, is labeled 2. These numbers need not correspond to the beats of the meter signature, which Momigny calls “conventional beats” (tems de convention). Because Momigny measures rhythm not by conventional beats but by “true beats” (tems veritables), upbeat and downbeat may be longer or shorter than conventional beats. They may also be longer or shorter than each other, because Momigny’s “true beats” are actual notes of the melody. Example 2.3 shows binary cadences in the tenor voice; the downbeat is three times the length of the upbeat. The bass also has binary cadences, but the bass’s downbeats are displaced by syncopation, making them equal in length to the upbeats. Example 2.4 shows that binary cadences may occur using a variety of note values, not only those indicated by the meter signature. Momigny calls “ternary” those cadences that comprise three notes, labeling the metrically weak notes 1 and 2, the strong note 3. The numeral 3 is also used for afterbeat (“feminine”) endings within an otherwise binary cadence; in that case, 2 represents the strongest beat. Example 2.5 illustrates both situations. Example 2.6 shows the theme from the Andante of Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony (no. 94), barred first as Haydn wrote it, then with the number of bar lines doubled. The doubling of bar lines is necessary at least in thought, according to Momigny, in order to understand that the quarter-​note resting points in Haydn’s melody do not fall on upbeats, as they appear to do in the score, but on downbeats. Aside from the missing upbeat in the initial “proposition” of each four-​measure phrase, all propositions in this melody are regular binary cadences, according to Momigny.

37 See Rothstein, “Meter and Text-​Setting in Italian Operas by Mozart and His Contemporaries,” in Analyzing Mozart’s Operas, ed. Nathan Martin and Lauri Suurpää (Leuven: Peeters, in press).

36  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 2.3.  Momigny, La seule vraie théorie de la musique: Binary cadences (cadences binaires)

Momigny’s analysis of Haydn’s theme illustrates a difficulty that some German music posed for French and Italian theorists. In the closing decades of the eighteenth century, weak-​beat cadences began to appear more frequently in German music, especially when composers, like Haydn in this case, were writing im Volkston.38 Weak-​ beat cadences represented a departure from the usual eighteenth-​century requirement that cadences fall on a strong beat. Momigny and his Italian successors maintained the eighteenth-​century conception of a cadence’s metrical placement well into the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-​century German theory is more equivocal on this point. Weber defines “cadence” without reference to meter, and most of his illustrations of cadences are unmeasured.39 A. B. Marx distinguishes between strong-​and weak-​ beat cadences, calling the latter “imperfect” (unvollkommen) and restricting them to interior punctuations reminiscent of Reicha’s quarter cadences.40 Asioli’s treatment of rhythm may be indebted to Momigny’s, but there are important differences. First, Asioli reverses Momigny’s numerical labels so that 1 indicates metric strength, 2 metric weakness. Asioli also states, initially, that a phrase normally begins and ends on strong beats. His term for beats is movimenti ritmici, literally “rhythmic motions”;41 Baragwanath translates this term as “impulses,” a translation that I will adopt. Example 2.7, from volume 1 of Asioli’s treatise, shows another key difference from Momigny: instead of applying to individual melodic notes, Asioli’s labels 1.o (primo) and 2.o (secondo) apply to equally spaced beats at a moderate tempo. Only at tempos of andante or moderato 38 See the discussion of this point in Rothstein, “National Metrical Types in Music of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” in Communication in Eighteenth-​Century Music, ed. Danuta Mirka and Kofi Agawu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 112–​59. 39 Weber, 3rd ed., 2:238–​50. 40 Marx, Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1841), 25–​29 and 52–​55. See especially Fig. 71 on p. 54. 41 Asioli, Il maestro di composizione, 4:16.

Example 2.4.  Momigny, La seule vraie théorie: Binary cadences in various meters

Example 2.5.  Momigny, La seule vraie théorie: Three-​note cadences

38  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 2.6.  Momigny, La seule vraie théorie: Metrical analysis of Haydn, Symphony no. 94, Andante

do Asioli’s beats match those indicated by the meter signature; even in moderato, Asioli treats , which the Italians called tempo ordinario, as having two beats per measure, not four. In adagio, Asioli’s beats correspond to notated half-​beats. In allegro, or in  Tempo a Capella, each beat corresponds to a notated measure, so that each pair of strong and weak beats comprises two notated measures.42 All of Asioli’s illustrations in example 2.7 contain an odd number of strong beats, as they must if (1) phrases begin and end on strong beats; (2) strong and weak beats alternate; and (3) beats are equally spaced. Making both beginnings and endings metrically strong is gained at the expense of symmetry; because Italian composers of the primo ottocento prized symmetry, this posed a problem for Asioli. A phrase that comprises an even number of beats can either begin or end on a strong beat, but it cannot do both if strong and weak beats alternate. The next example in volume 1 (not shown here) is a lengthy harmony exercise written in tempo ordinario, although only whole and half notes are used. Asioli comments that the “rhythmic phrase” (frase ritmica) is two measures long, with odd-​numbered measures strong and even-​numbered measures weak. Although “rhythmic phrase” is not a term he uses often, Asioli is clearly thinking of a metrical unit, not a melodic phrase. Asioli’s theory becomes more sophisticated in volume 3; he seems by now to have read other authors, including Momigny, Reicha, and Giuseppe Baini (about whom more in a moment). Volume 3 is devoted to accompanied melody, the texture typical of Italian opera. In volume 1, Asioli had used the term movimenti ritmici to describe strong and weak beats at a moderate tempo. With the addition of melody, he now subdivides rhythm into two species, ritmo melodico and ritmo armonico, terms he had not used before. Ritmo melodico is the type of rhythm described by Reicha, although Reicha is not cited. Ritmo armonico, Asioli explains, was the type of rhythm addressed in volume 1. He comments on the relation between the two rhythms: The melodic rhythm, or the phrase, is a part of the musical discourse that interacts continually with the ritmo armonico, which was already discussed in 42 Compare the treatment of real vs. notated measures in Caplin, Classical Form (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  39 Example 2.7.  Asioli, Il maestro di composizione, vol. 1: Strong and weak impulses at various tempi

the first volume. The latter, with its two impulses [movimenti], of which the first is strong and the second weak, supports the melodic rhythm with its cadences [cadenze].43 Although the melodic rhythm has its origin in the underlying harmonies and is subject to the regular impulses of the ritmo armonico, nevertheless, it is and always will be the ruler, the life and the soul of the musical discourse. It is this that attracts the main attention because of its beauty; and, as if disdainful of the uniformity of that which supports it, [it] incessantly seeks variety, now beginning the phrase on the second or the first impulse [movimento armonico], now on the various

43 It is not entirely clear whether by cadenze Asioli is referring to harmonic cadences or to rhythmic periodicity. Antonio Coli’s gloss on this passage suggests the latter interpretation (Asioli, vol. 4, xxx; Coli 1834, 97), and I agree. The term movimenti cadenzati in the following paragraph definitely refers to rhythmic periodicity. The English term “cadence” is sometimes used in this way: one speaks of the cadence of a march, of a person’s speech, etc.

40  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera beats [tempi] of the even or uneven measure, and now on the most minute subdivisions of it.44

Tempi seems to refer to the beats indicated by the meter signature; as described above, these beats are distinct from the impulses of the ritmo armonico. Asioli’s separation of ritmo melodico from ritmo armonico is what Baragwanath means when he speaks of “a union of two separate rhythmic systems.”45 Later Italian theorists adopted the same separation with various modifications. Although Asioli claims to have explained ritmo armonico in volume 1, he did not do so as clearly as one might wish. In fact, the term resists easy definition. It does not mean “harmonic rhythm,” although Baragwanath translates it that way in some instances. Asioli uses the noun armonia in several ways, but the word always maintains something of its ancient meaning of proportion or concord. Sometimes he uses armonia to refer to harmony as we understand it, but he also uses it to refer to the sounding-​together of orchestral instruments (much of vol. 3 is devoted to orchestration). In the term ritmo armonico, the adjective armonico seems to refer to periodicity or symmetry—​to harmonious proportion in time. This usage probably derives from Giuseppe Baini’s Saggio sopra l’identità de’ ritmi musicale e poetico (“Essay on the identity between musical and poetic rhythms,” 1820).46 Baini, who became famous for his biography of Palestrina, wrote a treatise on rhythm that includes no musical notation; its main concern is regular accentuation in poetry. Baini writes that if accents fail to recur every two, three, or four syllables, “the verse is faulty, loses its harmony (perde la sua armonia), and is reduced to prose.”47 Elsewhere he praises the “rhythmic-​harmonic versification” (ritmica armonica versificazione) of poetry in which accents recur at fixed intervals.48 Example 2.8 shows six melodies from Asioli’s volume 3. Most begin with a weak impulse (2o) and end with a strong impulse (1o). Because, in these examples, Asioli’s impulses are equivalent to notated measures in fast or moderate tempo, his 44 Asioli, 4:37: “Il ritmo Melodico, ossia la frase, è una particella del discorso musicale retta costantemente dal ritmo Armonico già dichiarato nel primo Libro. Questo, co’ suoi due movimenti, de’ quali il primo è forte e l’ altro debole, regge colle cadenze il ritmo Melodico. . . . Sebbene il ritmo melodico riconosca la sua origine nelle armonie sottostanti, e vada soggetto ai movimenti cadenzati del ritmo armonico, nondimeno è, e sarà sempre, il padrone, la vita e l’ anima del discorso musicale. Questo infatti attrae la principale attenzione, a motivo della sua piacevolezza; e quasi, sdegnando l’ uniformità di quello che lo regge, cerca incessantemente la varietà, ora incominciando la frase sul secondo o primo movimento armonico, ora sui vari tempi della misura pari o dispari, ed ora sulle più minute suddivisioni di essa.” In vol. 3, Asioli occasionally uses the term tempi ritmici in place of movimenti ritmici. 45 Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions, 68. 46 Giuseppe Baini, Saggio sopra l’identità de’ ritmi musicale e poetico (Florence, 1820). Coli (97n) identifies Baini’s treatise as a theoretical source for Asioli’s more practically oriented work. 47 Baini, 48. The complete sentence reads: “Se i ritorni oltrepassano questo numero, il verso è fallato, perde la sua armonia, si riduce una prosa, quantunque il concetto, la frase, e le parole appartenessero privatamente al Parnasso.” 48 Baini, 63. Coli clarifies some of Baini’s peculiar terminology.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  41 Example 2.8.  Asioli, vol. 3: Metrical analyses

42  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 2.8.  Continued

analyses show what many today would describe as a two-​bar level of hypermeter. Passages that begin on 1, like example 2.8d, often precede the melody with a single impulse of accompaniment; the melody then enters on 2. Where the melody itself begins on 1, the phrase normally ends, according to Asioli, on a 1 that is followed by an afterbeat.49 Example 2.8e is of this type, as is the first phrase of 2.8f. Both are by German composers, Haydn (Symphony no. 100, Andante) and Mozart (“Là ci darem la mano” from Don Giovanni). Each is notated twice, in two different meters, of which only the first is the composer’s. Asioli’s point is that the notation makes little difference to the metrical structure. What drives Asioli’s analyses of melodic rhythm is Italian versification, a topic that will be explored more fully in ­chapter 4. In particular, Asioli is concerned with what he calls the accento comune, the accent common to all line-​endings in Italian verse. This accent normally falls on the penultimate syllable in a line. In principle, the accento comune is also the strongest accent in the line. Despite his seeming indifference to notation, Asioli takes great care that this accent fall both on a notated downbeat and on a strong impulse of the ritmo armonico. It is because of the accento comune that Asioli’s analyses of melodies often resemble Momigny’s. The need to place the accento comune on a notated downbeat explains Asioli’s discussion of another Haydn example, the Andantino from the Quartet in C Major, op. 74, no. 1 (example 2.9). Asioli’s first point is a simple one: triple measures, like Haydn’s  measures, may often be combined plausibly into larger measures of  or . Compounding Haydn’s  measures, however, raises the question of where the bar lines should be placed, especially in the  version. He comments: This theme must begin, in principle, with an upbeat [if notated] in , since the accento comune of the phrase must fall on a downbeat. Its beats should be placed every quarter [measure] so that they will not be too slow.50

49 One of Asioli’s examples shows a pair of three-​measure phrases. His metrical analysis, which proceeds by the measure, is 1–​2–​1, 1–​2–​1. This is a rare example in which strong and weak beats do not alternate strictly. 50 Asioli, 3:16: “Questo motivo portato in Dodiciupla deve aver in principio in levare se l’accento comune della frase deve cadere in battere, e dovendosi collocare i movimenti ritmici armonici ad ogni quarto, affinchè non riescano troppo lenti.”

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  43 Example 2.9.  Asioli, vol. 3: Metrical analysis of Haydn’s String Quartet op. 74, no. 1, second movement

It is clear where Asioli places the accento comune in Haydn’s phrase: on the rearticulated suspension G4 in m. 3 of the original,  version. Asioli probably regarded the first violin’s phrase-​ending, with its repeated F♯s, as an elaborated version of the two-​ note ending G–​ F♯. This places the accento comune on the phrase’s penultimate “syllable,” with F♯ forming the afterbeat. Momigny treats phrase-​endings similarly in his analysis of Mozart’s String Quartet in D Minor, K. 421.51 In Germany, Weber was the first to propose a theory of meter that was level-​ invariant; that is, the alternation of strong and weak beats that operates within a single measure operates also at levels of two, four, eight, and sixteen notated measures. In Weber’s words, “The arrangement of the members of the larger rhythms is a larger symmetry; it is precisely similar to that involved in the structure of measures, except that it is all on a larger scale. . . . Hence the measures are distinguished from one another in such higher rhythms, in respect to their greater or lesser internal weight, in the same way as the parts of measure are distinguished among themselves.”52

51 Momigny’s analysis appears in Ruth Solie, ed., Source Readings in Music History: The Nineteenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 92–​114. 52 Weber, 2nd ed. (1824), 1:102–​3: “Die Gliederung der grösseren Rhythmen ist eine mehr ins Grosse gehende Symmetrie, übrigens der des Taktbaues völlig ähnlich, nur Alles nach grösserem Masstabe. . . . Darum unterscheiden sich in solchen höheren Rhythmen die Takte, rücksichtlich ihres grössern, oder geringern inneren Gewichtes, eben so von einander, wie die Takttheile unter sich.” I have modified the English translation by James F. Warner (Boston, 1851). This passage is absent from the first edition (1817), where Weber uses the term “periods” (Perioden) instead of “larger rhythms” or “higher rhythms” (grössere Rhythmen or höhere Rhythmen).

44  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 2.10.  Weber, Versuch: Analysis of the minuet from Mozart’s Don Giovanni

For Weber, the first measure in a “larger rhythm” is the most accented because it is precisely analogous to the first beat of a notated measure. Example 2.10 shows Weber’s analysis of the minuet from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, plus the beginning of a re-​notation in , which he describes as appropriate. From his description, it is clear that he regards the downbeat of m. 1 as the strongest beat in the opening eight-​ measure strain, and arguably the strongest beat in the entire minuet. Downbeats of even-​numbered measures are uniformly weak.53 From what we have seen of Asioli’s system, it is clear that he would have regarded the downbeats of Mozart’s even-​numbered measures as metrically strong; odd-​numbered measures would be weak. This is because the accento comune of each two-​measure melodic phrase falls on the first beat of its second measure. (Compare the  version of Haydn’s theme in example 2.9.) Weber’s habit of reading the first measure in a phrase as metrically strong in almost all circumstances would be continued by a series of other German and German-​influenced theorists, of whom Heinrich Schenker is perhaps the most important.54 53 The brackets above the melody in example 2.10 refer in the first instance to grouping structure: two-​ measure units pair into four-​measure units, which pair into eight-​measure units, which pair into a single unit of sixteen measures. Crucially, however, Weber understands these groups metrically: a group’s strongest point falls on its first downbeat. By implication, m. 1 is stronger than m. 9, the beginning of the strain’s second statement. 54 Regrettably, Danuta Mirka’s Hypermetric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021) appeared too late to be considered in this book.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  45

Midcentury Theorists After 1840, the publication of foreign treatises in Italy accelerated. Reicha’s two treatises on harmony (1818 and 1824) appeared in Italian in the early 1840s. The harmony treatise of François-​ Joseph Fétis was also influential, exerting an especially powerful influence on Abramo Basevi. Basevi is an interesting character. A Jewish physician, he devoted the middle part of his life to music, acting as a critic, theorist, and composer; in his later years he published philosophical treatises. This restless polymath was part of a Florentine circle that promoted foreign ideas. Basevi followed his book on Verdi with two treatises on harmony (1862 and 1865), the second an amplification of the first. The 1862 book, the larger of the two, is dedicated to Meyerbeer, who was admired as deeply by Basevi as he was by Fétis. Both regarded Meyerbeer as the chief representative of modern harmonic practice. The year 1853 saw the beginning of new directions in both German and Austrian music theory. Moritz Hauptmann published Die Natur der Harmonik und der Metrik (“The nature of harmony and meter”) and Carl Friedrich Weitzmann, a pupil of Hauptmann, published Der übermässige Dreiklang (“The augmented triad”). Both works would resonate for decades to come; both have received renewed attention from American theorists.55 Also in 1853, the Viennese theorist Simon Sechter published the first volume of Die Grundsätze der musikalischen Komposition (“The fundamentals of musical composition”), a work that revitalized the fundamental-​bass tradition. Sechter’s work was only partly original, but it inaugurated a distinctly Viennese school of harmonic theory that would culminate in the writings of Schenker and Schoenberg in the next century. Writings by Hauptmann and Sechter were translated into English during the nineteenth century, but not into French or Italian.

Theories of Harmony, 1840–​1860 Fétis was well aware of the musical ties between France and Italy; his Traité complet de la théorie et de la pratique de l’harmonie (“Complete treatise on the theory and practice and harmony”) was published simultaneously in French and Italian.56 Fétis’s first pedagogical work, a little handbook on harmony and accompaniment, had appeared in Italian in 1836. Half of the book consists of partimenti and related exercises, which surely eased the work’s publication in Naples. The other half contains much of Fétis’s harmonic theory, which follows Catel’s in several respects. My focus here will be on two aspects of Fétis’s theory: his notion of substitution, which would be extended by Basevi; and his four orders of harmony, in which 55 Hauptmann, Die Natur der Harmonik und der Metrik (Leipzig, 1853); Carl Friedrich Weitzmann, Der übermässige Dreiklang (Berlin, 1853). 56 Fétis, Complete Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Harmony, trans. Peter M. Landey (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2008). Landey’s translation is based on the first edition (1844).

46  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Fétis sometimes considers melodies separately from their accompanying harmonies. Basevi would extend this idea as well. Fétis describes as substitution the transformation of a dominant seventh chord into a dominant ninth. In the dominant ninth chord, the ninth above the bass substitutes for the octave; 5̂ is replaced by 6̂. Fétis gives the same explanation for the leading-​tone seventh chord, understanding it as a first-​inversion dominant seventh with substitution of 6̂ for 5̂. This idea almost certainly derives from Rameau’s Traité de l’harmonie (1722), in which leading-​tone seventh chords are conceptualized in a very similar way.57 The concept of substitution becomes more consequential when it is combined with two other means of modifying what Fétis calls “natural harmony”: prolongation (suspension into the next harmony) and alteration, concepts that appear also in Catel. Basevi extends the idea of substitution to all members of a triad and to both upper and lower neighbors. He calls these substituting neighbors attinenti, which might loosely be translated as “auxiliaries.” An attinente that is chromatically altered to lie a semitone, rather than a whole tone, away from some chord note is an attinente accidentale—​for example, an F♯ that displaces G in a dominant chord of C major.58 It is even possible for an attinente accidentale to embellish, and momentarily displace, a diatonic attinente, as in the passage from Beethoven’s Eroica shown in example 2.11. Here B♮ in the third measure is the lower attinente accidentale to C, which in turn is the upper attinente to the harmonic root, B♭. Somewhat similarly, the flatted 2̂ in a Neapolitan sixth chord (a term Basevi does not use) is not a harmonic root but an attinente accidentale to the fifth of the subdominant triad in minor.59 Like Fétis’s substitute tones, each of Basevi’s attinenti possesses a gravitational attraction to the chord note that it displaces; this gravitational pull normally requires the attinente to resolve to its respective chord tone. If such resolution is omitted—​ or, as Basevi would have it, if resolution is left to the listener’s imagination—​we have what Basevi calls a supplente or substitute tone in a narrower Example 2.11.  Basevi, Studi sull’ armonia: Attinenti in the finale of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3

57 Rameau, Treatise on Harmony, trans. Philip Gossett (New York: Dover, 1971), 93–​95. 58 Basevi does not extend his concept of attinenti to chordal sevenths. The concept of attinente could have been inspired by Momigny, who also emphasized the importance of chromatic auxiliaries. 59 Basevi, Studi sull’ armonia (Florence, 1865), 20. Sechter offers a similar explanation for the Neapolitan sixth. Although Basevi seems to have been able to read German, it is unclear whether he knew the work of Sechter or, for that matter, any other German music theorist.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  47 Example 2.12.  Basevi, Introduzione ad un nuovo sistema d’armonia, ex. 84: Bellini, I puritani

sense. Many of Basevi’s examples of supplenti are ninths above the bass that are left by leap.60 He offers many examples from the operatic repertoire, categorizing supplenti as either prepared or unprepared. Example 2.12, a famous phrase from Bellini’s I puritani, shows a prepared supplente: on the downbeat of the fourth measure, F in the vocal line substitutes for E♭, forming an unresolved suspension.61 As an extreme example, Basevi presents an accompanied melody of his own devising (example 2.13). Until the final chord, this melody consists exclusively of unprepared supplenti. The sixteenth notes are not preparations because they, too, are supplenti in relation to the chords that accompany them. Fétis traces the history of harmonic practice through four “orders,” which he calls unitonic, transitonic, pluritonic, and omnitonic. The unitonic order reigned before major-​minor tonality. In it, according to Fétis, no key can be firmly established because chords are uniformly consonant, and it is the resolution of chordal dissonance that serves to establish a key. In music closer to Fétis’s time, “unitonic effects” are created when two chords belonging to distantly related keys are juxtaposed, often with one tone held in common. Fétis singles out progressions between two chords separated by major or minor third, offering examples by Mozart and Rossini. In the Rossini example (example 2.14), the first chord is a dominant seventh of E♭ major, the second the tonic triad of G♭ major, with B♭ as the common tone.62 Changes of key that are executed by direct juxtaposition—​today called “common-​tone modulations” or “phrase modulations”—​are not modulations according to Fétis, because the new key is not prepared by its own dominant seventh; the element of “transition” is lacking. The transitonic order, the invention of which Fétis credits to Monteverdi, introduces the dominant seventh chord, which establishes a key through the resolution of the tritone contained within the chord. The pluritonic order, which Fétis credits to Mozart, permits certain enharmonic transformations, such as the treatment of a dominant seventh chord as an augmented-​sixth chord in another key. 60 Compare the discussion of the dominant ninth chord in Aldwell and Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading (1979 and later editions). 61 Basevi, Introduzione ad un nuovo sistema d’armonia (Florence, 1862), 57 and Ex. 84. 62 Fétis (English), 160.

48  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 2.13.  Basevi, Introduzione, ex. 99: “Melodia tutta composta di supplenti”

The omnitonic order, which Fétis claims is overtaking harmony in his own day, permits multiple chord notes and also non-​ chord notes—​ Basevi’s attinenti—​to undergo enharmonic transformation and to resolve into any key.63 63 Fétis (English), 180–​86.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  49 Example 2.14.  Fétis, Traité: Unitonic effect in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell

Example 2.15 shows a few of Fétis’s examples of omnitonic progression. In each case, the opening chord is a first-​inversion dominant seventh of C major, sometimes with substitution of A or A♭ for the root, G. A non-​harmonic D♯ is introduced in the soprano in the second half of the measure,64 and this D♯ is held over—​ “prolonged,” in the terminology of Catel and Fétis—​ into the following measure. There, D♯ may or may not become E♭, and it may be treated either as a chord note or as an attinente (to bring Basevi back into the picture). What distinguishes the omnitonic order from all previous orders is not only its greater freedom of modulation, nor even the freedom of enharmonic transformation that it offers, but the blurring of the boundary between chord tones and non-​chord tones. To some degree, Basevi’s concept of attinenti re-​ establishes that boundary. Fétis claims Rossini as a father of the omnitonic order and of advanced nineteenth-​century harmonic practice in general. He cites, among other things, Rossini’s use of a common-​tone augmented-​sixth chord in an aria from Guillaume Tell. In example 2.16, Fétis demonstrates how one such chord resolves to C major while suggesting two other keys that are not realized.65 The key of D♭ major is suggested because the chord sounds like that key’s dominant seventh. G major is 64 Examples that include A♭ as a substitute tone outline a version of the “Tristan” chord in the second half of m. 1. 65 Fétis (English), 189–​90. Five examples are offered; I have omitted the first two.

Example 2.15.  Fétis, Traité: Some progressions representing the omnitonic order

Example 2.15.  Continued

Example 2.16.  Fétis, Traité: Resolutions of the same chord to three different keys

52  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 2.17.  Fétis, Traité: A melody with a transitonic accompaniment

suggested because the chord’s two altered or substitute notes, A♭ (alteration) and E♭ (substitution), have tendencies toward notes of the G major triad, as does the diatonic tritone C/​F♯ between bass and alto. In one of his most interesting examples, Fétis presents a sixteen-​measure melody, apparently of his own composition, with two different accompaniments. The melody is entirely diatonic except for one chromatic passing tone. Its harmonic implications are clear. The first accompaniment, of which the beginning is shown in example 2.17, is in the same simple style as the melody, using mostly tonic and dominant chords. Melody and harmony agree; the music flows naturally. Fétis’s second accompaniment, shown in example 2.18, employs “the quasi omnitonic system of the harmony of our own day.” Its chromaticism, he says, is limited by the melody’s simplicity—​this is why the harmony is only quasi omnitonic—​but none of the chromatics could have been predicted from the melody itself. Melody and harmony are at cross purposes. A little earlier, Fétis had shown a melody by Rossini in which the first phrase is diatonic, with relatively clear harmonic implications. The second phrase, shown in example 2.19, contains a succession of notes, E5–​A4–​C5–​F4, that does not outline a plausible harmony in this context (the key is B♭ major). This passage of melody, says Fétis, is completely dependent on the accompaniment for its harmonic meaning. This observation is similar to one that Schenker would make sixty years later about a

Example 2.18.  Fétis, Traité: The same melody with a quasi omnitonic accompaniment

Example 2.19.  Fétis, Traité: A phrase from Rossini’s “Serenata,” melody only

54  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera passage from Tristan und Isolde.66 Neither Fétis nor Schenker claims that conflicts between melody and harmony are inadmissible; they merely note the effect. Fétis’s expressed unease about the coming of the omnitonic order. The following paragraph from the Traité complet has often been quoted: After much reservation, artists have plunged without restraint into the course of modulating music. Such abuse in the formulas of this music in recent years has allowed us to assert that tonal unity now is absolutely banished from the art. In my Philosophy of Music course (1832), when I predicted and announced this last result in music’s harmonic direction, I could not believe its realization was so close.67

The harmonic relation between melody and accompaniment is the main subject of Basevi’s two harmony treatises. He refers to conflicts between a melody and its accompaniment as the “torture of a melody” (tortura della melodia), but such torture need not be chromatic. To illustrate, he takes the opening of a duet movement from Bellini’s La sonnambula (example 2.20), first with Bellini’s tonic–​ dominant accompaniment, then with an accompaniment that tonicizes B♭ minor, the supertonic. He comments on the difference in effect between the two harmonizations. Yet Basevi’s recomposition remains wholly within Bellini’s style, as becomes clear from examples by Bellini later in the same treatise.68 Example 2.20.  Basevi, Introduzione ad un nuovo sistema d’armonia

a. A melody from Bellini’s La sonnambula, with Bellini’s accompaniment b. The same melody, “tortured” by a different accompaniment 66 See e­ xample 3.2 and the accompanying discussion. 67 Fétis, Traité (Paris, 1844), 195–​96; quoted in Mary Arlin, “Metric Mutation and Modulation: The Nineteenth-​Century Speculations of F.-​J. Fétis,” Journal of Music Theory 44 (2000): 261–​322; 285. 68 One such example is reproduced in this book as ­example 9.8.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  55 Basevi presents several other examples of conflict between melody and accompaniment. One is the famous horn call just before the recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven’s Eroica. Another is the end of the transition between the scherzo and finale of Beethoven’s Fifth, where a double pedal, C/​G, underlies the ascending violin melody until, finally, the dominant seventh of C emerges. Passages from waltzes by Johann Strauss Sr. are also quoted; the later treatise (1865) even includes an excerpt from Tannhäuser. Basevi refers repeatedly to “the music of the future,” so he had read Wagner’s prose writings. His knowledge of German music and musical culture far exceeded that of most Italians at the time. When Fétis and Basevi speak of the harmonic implications of a melody, they are rarely explicit about what they mean. They assume that, for relatively simple melodies, the harmonic implications will be obvious to readers. A contemporary theorist who explored this subject in greater detail was the Austrian Simon Sechter. Volume 2 of Sechter’s Grundsätze (1854) is a loose collection of three studies: one on meter, one on single-​voiced composition, and one on harmonizing a melody. It is the second study that concerns us here. Sechter defines single-​voiced composition as “the melody of a single voice, insofar as the laws of harmony are contained within it in such a way that one can understand it even without the accompaniment of another voice or instrument. Such a melody is thus a gradually unfolding harmony.”69 Sechter considers the melodic outlining of triads and seventh chords at length. He also demonstrates—​ as Heinichen, Rameau, and Kirnberger had done in the eighteenth century—​how a single-​line melody may imply a texture of three or four voices.70 Sechter then proceeds to stepwise motion, which he considers in two ways: first with each note, each of which lasts at least one beat, representing a different harmony; then with a unidirectional stepwise motion, often in eighth notes, that outlines one or more harmonies. The first perspective resembles that of Sechter’s Viennese predecessor Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, who analyzed a cantus firmus harmonically, each note representing the root, third, or fifth of some diatonic triad.71 The second perspective prefigures Schenker’s concept of the linear progression (Zug). For example, a stepwise progression, in C major, from B to F or from F to B, represents a dominant seventh chord, which demands resolution. Like Schenker, Sechter categorizes stepwise motions according to the interval outlined—​a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, or octave.72 He considers combinations of leaps with steps; he also discusses the role of meter in clarifying the harmonic implications of single-​line melodies.

69 Sechter, Grundsätze, 2:145: “Unter diesem Satze versteht man die Melodie einer einzigen Stimme, insofern in ihr die Gesetze der Harmonie dergestalt enthalten sind, dass man sie auch ohne Begleitung einer andern Stimme oder eines Instrumentes verstehen kann. Eine solche Melodie ist sodann eine nach und nach entwickelnde Harmonie.” 70 Heinichen, Der General-​Bass in der Composition (1728); Rameau, Code de musique pratique (1760); Kirnberger, Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (vol. 1, 1771). 71 See the discussion in Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 187–​89. 72 Sechter, vol. 2, 175–​97 (major mode) and 231–​86 (minor mode).

56  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Weitzmann’s treatise on the augmented triad, which was probably unknown to Basevi, has some points of contact with Basevi’s concerns. To both theorists, the displacement of a chord note by a diatonic semitone was a starting point for speculation. Unlike Basevi, Weitzmann uses displacements by semitone from a major or minor triad first to obtain and then to reify a “new” harmony, the augmented triad. Conversely, any note in an augmented triad may resolve by semitone, acting in effect as an attinente (perhaps an attinente accidentale) to a note of some major or minor triad. The liberty with which Weitzmann treats enharmonic change in connection with the augmented triad recalls Fétis’s omnitonic order, as do his illustrations of the chord’s modulatory possibilities. Neither Fétis nor Basevi recognizes the augmented triad as a fundamental chord; nor does Weber; but Reicha does.73 Where Weitzmann surpasses other theorists of his day is in his focus on dividing the octave into equal intervals. The augmented triad and the diminished-​ seventh chord share this property, if equal temperament and enharmonic equivalence are assumed. The augmented triad divides the octave into three intervals of four semitones each (3 × 4); the diminished-​seventh chord divides it into four intervals of three semitones each (4 × 3). Weitzmann’s illustration in example 2.21 shows that there exist exactly three distinct diminished-​seventh chords, which Weitzmann numbers with Arabic numerals 1–​3, and four distinct augmented triads, which he numbers with Roman numerals I–​IV. His example also shows that each chord of one type shares exactly one tone with each chord of the other type. To exhaust “the twelve tones of our system,” as he puts it, Weitzmann transposes the diminished-​seventh chord not by successive semitones, as is usually done today, but by successive major thirds, the distinguishing interval of the Example 2.21.  Weitzmann, The Augmented Triad: Interaction between the four augmented triads and the three diminished-​seventh chords

73 Reicha, Cours de composition musicale, 8. For Weber, see his Versuch, 1st ed., 254; the same passage recurs in all later editions.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  57 augmented triad; he transposes the augmented triad by successive minor thirds, the distinguishing interval of the diminished-​seventh chord. The two chord types are thus brought into closer relation. The type of thinking exhibited in example 2.21 takes the two chord types, in effect, out of the realm of tonal harmony and into that of mathematical group theory. It is a foretaste of the post-​tonal theory that would develop in the twentieth century.

Theories of Rhythm, 1840–​1860 The midcentury in Italy saw few new developments in the theory of rhythm; what activity there was is covered by Baragwanath. In his book on Verdi, Basevi complains repeatedly that Italian composers are too conservative in their melodic rhythms, so there may have been little need for new theory in this area. In France, Fétis published a series of articles, largely speculative, on the future of musical rhythm. The most significant developments in rhythmic theory occurred in German-​speaking lands, where Hauptmann and Sechter introduced new ideas. Basevi’s complaints concern the close relation between Italian poetic meters and the melodic rhythms to which composers traditionally set them: given the former, the latter result more or less automatically. Consequently, many melodies share the same rhythms, as Basevi never tired of pointing out. More than a century later, the German musicologist Friedrich Lippmann would demonstrate the truth of Basevi’s claim.74 Manuel García fils (1805–​1906), a Spaniard by birth, taught singing at the Paris Conservatory; he also invented the laryngoscope. The second volume of his Traité complet de l’art du chant (“Complete treatise on the art of singing,” 1847) includes re-​barrings of operatic melodies in which Asioli’s principles are closely followed. Two of these analyses are reproduced in example 2.22. García presents the composer’s notation first, his own notation afterward; the example shows only Example 2.22.  García, Traité complet de l’art du chant, vol. 2: Melodies by Mozart and Rossini re-​notated

74 Friedrich Lippmann, “Der italienische Vers und der musikalische Rhythmus: Zum Verhältnis von Vers und Musik in der italienischen Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts, mit einem Rückblick auf die 2. Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Analecta musicologica 12 (1973): 253–​369; 14 (1974): 324–​410; 15 (1975): 298–​333.

58  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera García’s versions. Both pieces are in fast tempo: the Rossini is in alla breve, Allegro; the Mozart is in , Presto.75 In the Rossini, García places the accento comune of each line, which Rossini sets to four measures of music, on the downbeat of his  measure; the text’s secondary accent falls on beat 3, the secondary strong beat. Textual and metrical accents correlate perfectly. In the Mozart, García treats da Ponte’s five-​syllable lines as half-​lines; the accento comune of the doubled line is placed on the downbeat of García’s  measure. In both pieces, García’s re-​notation is intended to help the singer to feel longer phrases by counting slower beats. His notation also places the cadences of musical phrases on downbeats, as Reicha and Asioli advised. Fétis’s ideas about rhythm have been explored by Mary Arlin and Harald Krebs.76 One aspect of Fétis’s work that neither author discusses is his comparison of French and Italian prosody, contained in the last of nine articles on rhythm that he published in 1852.77 At the same time that Basevi was complaining about the excessive regularity of Italian rhythms, Fétis complained that French poetic rhythms were not regular enough. Poetic asymmetry leads to melodic asymmetry, a trait that Fétis believes faulty and ineffective; the symmetry of Italian poetic rhythm allows Italian melodies to be symmetrical, hence memorable and expressively superior. Fétis singles out Metastasio for praise, quoting passages from four of his libretti. He commends some recent French poets for seeking to introduce Italian rhythmic uniformity into French verses intended for music. Fétis’s fundamental conservatism is even more evident here than it is in his fear for music’s omnitonic future. As Andreas Giger has pointed out, Fétis was happy to praise irregularities of musical rhythm in vocal music so long as they occurred within an overall symmetry. Symmetry itself was Fétis’s sine qua non; without it, music could not be said to have rhythm at all.78 The other aspect of Fétis’s rhythmic theory that concerns us involves a particular kind of rhythmic mutation, as he calls it. Following his four orders of harmony, Fétis sketches four orders of rhythm: unirhythmic, transirhythmic, plurirhythmic, and omnirhythmic (he leaves the last mostly undefined). In his own day, Fétis writes, rhythm is still in the unirhythmic era, in that a single meter still governs entire pieces. Unirhythmic mutation involves shifting the bar lines in an existing melody without changing the length or accentual structure of the measure itself. Like many theorists before and after him, Fétis distinguishes between metrical and rhetorical accents; shifting the bar lines changes the relation between the two, from coincident to non-​coincident or vice versa. He regards rhythmic 75 The pieces are: Rossini, stretta of the Introduzione in Semiramide, act 1; Mozart, “Fin ch’han dal vino” from Don Giovanni, act 1. García incorrectly gives the meter of the Rossini as C. 76 Mary Arlin, “Metric Mutation and Modulation”; Harald Krebs, Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 77 Fétis, “Le rhythme de la versification dans ses rapports avec le chant,” Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 26 December 1852, 473–​76. 78 Giger, Verdi and the French Aesthetic: Verse, Stanza, and Melody in Nineteenth-​Century Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 62–​63 and 201. On Fétis’s requirement for symmetry see Arlin, 281–​84.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  59 Example 2.23.  Fétis, “Du développement futur de la musique”: Rhythmic mutations of a theme from Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6 (quoted in Arlin, “Metric Mutation,” 274)

mutation of this type as a useful source of variety when a melody returns within the same piece. Example 2.23, reproduced from Arlin’s study, shows three versions of the scherzo theme from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. The first version is Beethoven’s. The second version shifts the melody one quarter note to the right so that it starts on a downbeat. The third version shifts the melody another quarter note to the right, so it begins with a two-​quarter-​note upbeat. Fétis describes the effects in this way: the first version is light and free; the second version features a firm and decisive attack on the downbeat of each measure, the notes grouping three by three within the bar lines; the third version is gracious and elegant, sharing something of the lightness of the first and the determination of the second.79 Like Asioli, Fétis recognizes that melodic phrases may begin at any point within a measure. But he seems more willing than Asioli to let phrases end at any point within a measure. Perhaps this is because Fétis knew so much music from different cultures and historical periods, whereas Asioli was working within a quite limited stylistic range.80 According to Fétis, not every unirhythmic mutation is successful aesthetically: when he shifts mm. 1–​4 from the Andante of Haydn’s Symphony no. 104 by a quarter note (half a measure), he finds the result unsatisfactory. Mutation is most likely to work, he says, where the same rhythmic 79 Arlin, 274–​75; Fétis, “Du développement futur de la musique: Dans le domaine de rhythme,” Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris 19, 298. Arlin comments on the tonal implications of the three barrings, noting that the first and third place chord notes on downbeats while the second does not; hence its quality of tension. 80 For example, Asioli criticizes Haydn for using hemiola in rapid tempi; he calls this “repugnant.” Asioli, 3:14.

60  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera pattern is repeated in symmetrical fashion.81 The greater the rhythmic variety from one measure to another, the less likely it is that mutation will produce a pleasing result. The speculative side of Hauptmann’s work lies mostly beyond the scope of this book, but his speculations have practical implications. Hauptmann’s basic model of musical meter is beginning-​ accented: that which comes first is accented because it possesses “the energy of beginning.” So far he agrees with Weber. But for the dialectically inclined Hauptmann, every thesis has its antithesis, and the antithesis of beginning-​accent is end-​accent. He proceeds to detail a large number of possible correlations between beats and metrical accents—​possible rhythmic patterns, as he acknowledges—​ but beginning-​ accented meter remains his starting point. How, then, is one to form an ending? A series of “positive” beat-​pairs, 1–​2, can never form an ending; 1–​2 would repeat endlessly, without finding a point of resolution. For a rhythmic close to occur, one needs a “negative” pair, 2–​1, ending on a “positive first.” If, however, a rhythmic close is made on a 2, that is possible because the first half of a 2 is a 1, an accented beat, at a level half as large. (This is the same reasoning that Momigny used in dealing with the Andante of Haydn’s “Surprise” symphony.) The only impossibility is to close on an “absolute last,” which for Hauptmann means the final sixteenth note in a  measure.82 Hauptmann’s attitude toward large-​scale symmetry is similar to Weber’s. He compares the individual measures in a sixteen-​measure period to the individual sixteenth notes within a  measure. He regards both contexts as metrical and thus as beginning-​accented in principle. But units of sixteen lie near the limits of comprehensibility. Only in dance pieces, says Hauptmann, do units of four or eight measures invariably succeed each other symmetrically; music that is “richer in contents and higher of purpose” tends to break out of large symmetries. Weber had made the same point in 1817. Of the topics covered in Sechter’s Von den Gesetzen des Taktes in der Musik (“On the laws of meter in music”), which opens volume 2 of his Grundsätze, only one is relevant here: the treatment of cadences and other resting points. Although Sechter’s initial presentation of musical meter involves beginning-​ accented measures in the manner of Weber, Hauptmann, and Marx, his treatment of resting points and cadences emphasizes the motion from upbeat to downbeat in the manner of Momigny and his eighteenth-​century predecessors. Like Asioli, Sechter favors beginning-​accent when he presents meter in the abstract, but end-​accent where complete melodic phrases and periods are concerned. Sechter’s examples are self-​composed; none is taken from the repertoire. For most of his study, examples begin on a downbeat and end with a note lasting a full measure. As soon as the subject shifts from the basics of meter and the nature of 81 Arlin, 272–​73. 82 Hauptmann, The Nature of Harmony and Metre, trans. W. E. Heathcote (London, 1888), 254–​57. Schoenberg may have had Hauptmann’s dictum in mind when he ended his opera Erwartung on the “absolute last” of a measure; Berg followed suit in the “Marsch” from Drei Orchesterstücke, op. 6. The rhythmic peculiarity of these endings was brought to my attention by the late Alan Stout.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  61 harmonic rhythm (the latter a major preoccupation) to musical punctuation and cadential closure, most examples begin with upbeats. Example 2.24 resembles a gavotte; each melodic unit begins with a two-​quarter-​note upbeat in alla breve. Even when an example appears, like example 2.25, to begin on a downbeat, Sechter makes it clear that he regards the first measure as an upbeat to the second, the third measure an upbeat to the fourth, and so on. Asioli would have agreed, but Weber would have analyzed the two-​measure level in the opposite way, with odd-​numbered measures strong and even-​numbered measures weak. For Weber there was nothing wrong, or even unusual, about placing cadences in weak measures. Example 2.24.  Sechter, Von den Gesetzten des Taktes in der Musik, 58: An eight-​ measure period with a resting point on each downbeat

Example 2.25.  Sechter, 59: The same period with twice as many measures (schlecht =​“bad,” gut =​“good”)

62  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

Conclusion Except for Asioli and Basevi, we will refer back only occasionally to the theorists discussed in this chapter. The analyses in this book are based on more recent methods, but those methods intersect in various ways with the ideas of the Italian and French theorists discussed here. My concern in this chapter has been to explore theories that were contemporaneous with the operatic repertoire that is this book’s principal focus, and to contrast theoretical trends in Germany, especially North Germany, with those in France and Italy. During the primo ottocento, Italian musicians paid far more attention to what was going on in Paris than to developments in Berlin, Mainz, or Leipzig. French treatises were translated into Italian; German treatises were not. Conversely, Italian pedagogical methods made their way to France, as one sees from the writings of Catel and Choron; German pedagogy took a different route, evident in the work of Weber and Marx. The German approach was more work-​oriented, more analytical; the Italian approach was based on rote learning and the replication of traditional patterns. It also placed far greater emphasis on vocal music. Naturally, there was some mixing of traditions. Reicha is a key figure here, because he brought a German perspective to his career as a teacher and writer in Paris. The emphasis on operatic music in his Traité de mélodie (1814) and Art du compositeur dramatique (1833) was unusual for a German theorist but perfectly natural in Paris. Reicha’s influence in France was considerable; he counted Berlioz, Liszt, and Franck among his students. Some of that influence made its way to Italy through his writings. An important difference between the German and Franco-​Italian traditions concerns the relation between melody and harmony. Students in nineteenth-​ century France, Italy, and Austria were more likely to learn cantus firmus technique, which regards a melody as existing apart from any of its possible accompaniments. Protestant Germany had the chorale, but chorale melodies were composed much later than the plainchants that formed the traditional basis of cantus firmus pedagogy. With some exceptions, chorale melodies could be fit into major-​minor tonality without too much strain.83 The same cannot be said of plainchants. Choron advocated the study of counterpoint to plainchant cantus firmi as the most valuable exercise available to a young composer and as indispensable to the progress of music.84 The perspectives on melody of Fétis and Basevi, examined in this chapter, were more likely to be formed in countries that valorized melody per se—​countries that, in effect, took Rousseau’s side in his dispute with Rameau over

83 But see Vogler’s Choral-​System (Copenhagen, 1800), which advocates that modal chorale melodies be given modal harmonizations. See also Lori Burns, Bach’s Modal Chorales (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 1995). 84 Choron, Considérations sur la nécessité de rétablir le chant de l’Église de Rome dans toutes les Églises de l’Empire (Paris, 1811), 14–​15. For more on the plainchant revival in France see Christensen, Stories of Tonality in the Age of François-​Joseph Fétis, 29–​66.

  Theoretical Contexts I  T  63 the relation of melody to harmony.85 It is probably no coincidence that these were Catholic countries. Another important difference concerns musical meter, a subject to be explored in greater depth in ­chapter 4. German theorists such as Weber, Marx, and Hauptmann gravitated toward a beginning-​ accented model of meter and hypermeter. French and Italian theorists, such as Momigny and Asioli, gravitated toward end-​ accented models. Sechter, an Austrian, held a middle position, beginning-​accented at the level of the measure but end-​accented at the level of the phrase. It was not until the 1880s, with Rudolph Westphal and Hugo Riemann, that German theory shifted decisively toward an end-​accented view of meter and phrase rhythm.86

85 See, inter alia, Nathan Martin, “Rameau and Rousseau: Harmony and History in the Age of Reason” (PhD diss., McGill University, 2008). 86 Westphal, Allgemeine Theorie der musikalischen Rhythmik seit J. S. Bach (Leipzig, 1880); Riemann, Musikalische Dynamik und Agogik (Hamburg, 1884).

C HA P T E R

Three

Theoretical Contexts II Schenker and Riemann

In this chapter, I address the applicability to nineteenth-​century Italian opera of two analytical perspectives that originated after the period covered by this book. Both arose in the German-​speaking world but have been developed further in North America. Heinrich Schenker (1868–​1935) inaugurated one, Hugo Riemann (1849–​1919) the other. We will begin by exploring Schenker’s attitude toward opera, which was mostly negative. We then consider reasons why Schenker’s ideas might nevertheless be applied to nineteenth-​century opera. The second section, on Riemann, includes so-​called neo-​Riemannian theory, a branch of harmonic theory that combines Riemann’s chordal transformations with ideas that trace back to the post-​tonal theories of Milton Babbitt, Allen Forte, David Lewin, and others.

Heinrich in Italy During the last three decades of his life—​decades in which he produced all of the writings for which he is known today—​Schenker had two objections to Italian opera: it was Italian, and it was opera. Schenker was much less hostile to opera at the dawn of his career, when he wrote a respectful review of Verdi’s Falstaff, then new; a second, still more positive assessment of the same opera, headed “sub specie aeternitatis”; and a glowing review of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, which Schenker proclaimed the greatest comic opera since Le nozze di Figaro.1 In his second article on Falstaff he proclaimed that opera a masterpiece, his only reservation being that it lacks the popular or folk element that had been traditional in opera buffa from Pergolesi to Rossini. For this reason, he believed, Falstaff would remain an opera for connoisseurs, as indeed it has. Its lack of the folk element, which Schenker regarded as timeless, would eventually make the opera seem dated, he says, in a way that Il barbiere di Siviglia never will. It is no accident that all of the operas named above are comic. Schenker was a citizen of Austria-​Hungary, a multinational empire, but he was also a follower of 1 The essays are reprinted in Hellmut Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker als Essayist und Kritiker (Hildesheim: Olms, 1985). The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0004

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  65 Johann Gottfried von Herder, the eighteenth-​century philosopher of nationalism. Like Herder, Schenker distinguished between the Volk and the rabble (Herder’s term for the latter is der Pöbel, Schenker’s die Massen), and he regarded the intellectual elite of a nation as its natural aristocracy.2 Although he never lived in the German state, he considered Germany an authentic nation and his nation, because the German language and German culture were his. By contrast, Austria lacked its own language and was merely a political entity. Schenker’s Herderian viewpoint helps to explain his sentimental attachment to the folk element in the music of various nations; he even praised some of Bartók’s folk-​song settings.3 For the young Schenker, a nation’s comic operas express the soul of its Volk; he cites Il barbiere and The Bartered Bride in this connection. He expresses mild regret over the Wagnerian influence, as he saw it, on Verdi’s Falstaff and Smetana’s later operas. Schenker’s attitude toward opera hardened after 1900 as he made the transition from composer-​critic to theorist-​pedagogue, and as he re-​evaluated the position of Wagner in German musical culture. In later years he also wrote much less about comic opera. When he writes on opera after the turn of the century, he is usually thinking of serious opera and works of mixed character such as Don Giovanni. By the time Schenker came to public attention in the early 1890s, the trope of German disdain for Italian music was nearly a century old. The history of that attitude may be found elsewhere.4 Schenker, to put it mildly, did nothing to ameliorate it, his early enthusiasm for Falstaff notwithstanding. His position toward the end of his life is expressed in a 1934 article published in a German arts magazine, Deutsche Zeitschrift: Zweimonatshefte für eine deutsche Volkskultur (“German Journal: Bimonthly for a German Volk-​Culture”). Volkskultur was a bit of Nazi-​friendly jargon, added in October 1932 when the magazine changed its name from Der Kunstwart. Edited since 1926 by Hermann Rinn (1895–​1974), the magazine positioned itself as nationalist and conservative.5 Schenker was a longtime subscriber and occasional contributor.

Cf. Herder, Letters concerning the Progress of Humanity (1792): “There exists in the state only a single class: the people (not the rabble)—​to it belongs the king as much as the farmer, each in his place, in the circle destined for him. Nature creates noble, great, wise men, education and occupations form their abilities—​these are heads and leaders of the people (aristodemocrats) arranged by God and the state.” Herder: Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Michael N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 364. See also Schenker’s letter of 2 November 1922 to August Halm; Schenker Documents Online (https://​sche​nker​docu​ment​sonl​ine.org/​docume​nts/​cor​resp​onde​nce/​DLA-​ 69.930-​11.html, accessed 9 July 2021). 3 See Schenker’s letter to Felix Salzer of 31 December 1933; Schenker Documents Online (https://​sche​ nker​docu​ment​sonl​ine.org/​docume​nts/​cor​resp​onde​nce/​FS-​40-​1_​19.html, accessed 9 July 2021). 4 See, for example, Sebastian Werr and Daniel Brandenburg, eds., Das Bild der italienischen Oper in Deutschland (Münster: LIT, 2004); also Bernd Sponheuer, “Reconstructing Ideal Types of the ‘German’ in Music,” in Music and German National Identity, ed. Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 36–​58. 5 The flavor of the magazine just before the Nazis took power may be gleaned from the lead article in the September 1932 issue, the last to be published under the name Der Kunstwart. In “Vom Volk zur Nation” (Kunstwart 45: 745–​52), Hermann Ullmann argues that the Nazis, by cooperating with other right-​wing parties, were not being ruthless enough. He also argues that the map of Europe needs to be changed to unite ethnic Germans living outside Germany with the core state (Kernstaat). 2

66  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Schenker’s article is entitled Vom Unterschied zwischen der italienischen und der deutschen Musik (“On the difference between Italian and German music”), and its text was incorporated in full into Schenker’s last book, Der freie Satz.6 Schenker’s conclusion is succinct: “Italian music, always bound to words, must be appraised as merely a preliminary step toward the German, just as in previous epochs the period of irrationality, the first contrapuntal attempts, and the first paths of Italian diminution, etc., signified preliminary stages of development, never equally valid states.”7 As Schenker put it in a 1931 letter to Wilhelm Furtwängler, “What the earliest Italian composers wrote still benefitted even our [German] masters, whereas Verdi is by contrast of no artistic value.”8 In the same letter he retracts his judgment, published just one year earlier, of Verdi as a “talent.”9 Between 1893 and 1931, Verdi’s status for Schenker thus declined from “genius” to “talent” to nonentity. In Schenker’s view, once Bach and Handel had established “the mission of German genius”—​the title of his most repulsive essay10—​Italian music had served its purpose and was no longer needed. The “vocal epoch” was over, but Italy failed to recognize the new dispensation. Only in the music of Domenico Scarlatti did the Italian musical inheritance blossom into purely musical mastery on a par with the German achievement. Yet Scarlatti was an isolated case: he “had neither successors in his native country nor any real recognition of his unique worth”;11 “Italy was a part of him, yet not the converse: he was no part of Italy.”12 In effect, Scarlatti was ethnically Italian but spiritually German—​a telling judgment coming from someone who was ethnically a Polish Jew but felt spiritually German.13 It was not only Italian opera that Schenker scorned; it was opera in general. Here Schenker’s attitude was paradoxical. He enjoyed many operas and operettas, including Il barbiere (“thoroughly exquisite—​not high art, but art nevertheless”14), Faust, Carmen, Cavalleria rusticana, and Die Fledermaus, and he was always ready 6 Schenker, Free Composition (Der freie Satz), trans. and ed. Ernst Oster (New York: Longman, 1979), 93–​95 and 161. The passage on p. 161 was suppressed in the second German edition by its editor, Oswald Jonas. 7 Free Composition, 161; translation by John Rothgeb. 8 From the second draft of a letter dated 13 November 1931; Schenker Documents Online (https://​ sche​nker​docu​ment​sonl​ine.org/​docume​nts/​cor​resp​onde​nce/​OJ-​5-​11_​1b.html, accessed 9 July 2021). Translation by Ian Bent. 9 Schenker, “Miscellanea,” trans. Ian Bent, in The Masterwork in Music, vol. 3, ed. William Drabkin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 71. 10 Schenker, “The Mission of German Genius,” trans. Ian Bent, in Der Tonwille, vol. 1, ed. William Drabkin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 3–​20. 11 Schenker, Free Composition, 94. 12 Schenker, “Domenico Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonata in D Minor,” trans. Ian Bent, in The Masterwork in Music, vol. 1, ed. William Drabkin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 67–​74; 68. 13 In his 1893 review of Falstaff, Schenker declares that Verdi’s opera is “immeasurably more German (despite all the Italian melody!) than Nicolai’s Merry Wives of Windsor” (Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker als Essayist und Kritiker, 48). On Schenker’s Polish background see Lee Rothfarb, “Heinrich Szenker, Galitzianer: The Making of a Man and a Nation,” Journal of Schenkerian Studies 11 (2018): 1–​50. 14 From Schenker’s diary for 11 October 1925; quoted in Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker: nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, 269.

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  67 to praise a good operatic performance.15 But his suspicions were aroused by opera’s appeal to the masses.16 This attitude comes through in another passage from Der freie Satz: For [the masses] music has always been and remains only an accompaniment to dance, march, or song; at best, a kind of utilitarian art, if one can accept the inherent contradiction. A feeling for such music fills head and heart, even those of the masses, but this feeling is not adequate to comprehend the true and lofty art of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Indeed, it tends to lead away from those concepts and responses which are essential to music as an art. Although J. S. Bach in his Passions provides the aurally “visible,” the greater portion of his art remains incomprehensible to the masses. Although Haydn offers them his oratorios, the absolute [unanschaubare] music of his chamber works and symphonies can never assume real importance in their lives. Mozart lets them view his operas, but they will never comprehend the distance which separates his great operatic art from the operatic music of other composers. Beethoven jubilantly sings the praises of womanly fidelity in his visible Fidelio, and in the Ninth Symphony, together with Schiller, he sings the “Hymn to Joy”—​nevertheless, the masses will never have access to the rest of his art.17

The emphasis in this quotation on visibility and invisibility may ring familiar to Jewish and Muslim readers, although its context is one of Kunstreligion. Schenker’s argument is reminiscent of Moses’s argument in Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron: the invisible is superior to the visible. In a negative sense, it also chimes with Wagner’s definition of music drama as “deeds of music made visible.”18 For the later Wagner, the visible aspect of music drama corresponds to, points to, and aids the understanding of the musical discourse, which Wagner had come to conceive (with a little help from Schopenhauer) as primus inter pares within the Gesamtkunstwerk. For Schenker, by contrast, the visible element in opera points away from understanding music. Tellingly, Schenker refers to Haydn’s instrumental music as unanschaubar, a word that is used mostly in theological contexts.19 As Schenker’s reference to Beethoven’s Ninth suggests, he believed that the word, in the form of Schiller’s poem, may act as Pied Piper to the masses, who can follow art in its external aspects but are unable to comprehend music’s invisible workings. Although Schenker does not use Wagner’s term “absolute music” in the passage 15 On 31 December 1934, one month before his death, Schenker praised a broadcast performance of Die Fledermaus by the Vienna State Opera, writing in his diary, “Tears came to my eyes—​a most brilliant performance.” Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker, 46 and 269. 16 On this subject see Ian Biddle, Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History (London: Routledge, 2011), ­chapter 3; also Nicholas Cook, The Schenker Project: Culture, Race, and Music Theory in Fin-​ de-​siècle Vienna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), ­chapter 3. 17 Schenker, Free Composition, 4. 18 Wagner’s phrase originates in his 1872 essay Über die Benennung “Musikdrama” (“On the appellation ‘music drama’ ”). 19 Thus, for example, Herder: “Moses’ Jehovah ist unanschaubar. . . . Dem Moses war die göttliche Erscheinung also nur ein Symbol.” Herder, Vom Geist der ebräischen Poesie, zweiter Theil (Dessau, 1783), 47–​48. A more common word for “invisible” is unersichtbar, the word used by Wagner to describe the “invisible orchestra” at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.

68  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera quoted above, elsewhere in Der freie Satz he refers to “absolute music,” “absolute diminution,” and “German instrumental diminution,” all of which stand in contrast to “Italian word-​tone diminution,” which at best serves the word, at worst merely the singer. Schenker’s most extended discussion of opera is found in his essay Über den Niedergang der Kompositionskunst (“On the decline of the art of composition”), which was intended as an appendix to his Harmonielehre of 1906 but remained unpublished until 2005.20 This lengthy essay was intended, like Schenker’s 1912 book on the Ninth Symphony, as a rebuttal to Wagner’s aesthetics.21 In Niedergang, Schenker reveals why he dislikes and distrusts the theater, whether spoken or musical. To apprehend a theatrical work, he writes, is all too easy—​easier than to understand a poem, a painting, or a work of absolute music. To appreciate the latter arts requires concentration, inward attunement, and education; to appreciate a play or an opera, one need only attend to the visible proceedings onstage and to the words. Thus, Schenker claims, Goethe and Schiller are known to the masses only by their plays, Mozart only by his operas; the other works of these masters are effectively unknown. In a theatrical work, the poet and the composer can speak to the masses, and they are often tempted to do so. But by combining the verbal, visual, and musical arts, each of the component arts is forced to sacrifice some of its essential qualities. Painting and music suffer the most: “Instead of appearing with their innate effect, painting and music on the stage, in such circumstances, merely serve as applied arts, and from the outset their fate is sealed.”22 The verbal narrative triumphs because it uses the medium of everyday communication. In response to this threat, painting and music have retreated into what Schenker calls an “aristocratic” independence, wherein each may follow its own laws in peace: “they were content to give up, once and for all, feeling entirely at home in the world at large.” Absolute art is, inherently, socially alienated. Schenker’s is a strikingly modernist viewpoint, and—​like much early twentieth-​century modernism—​it is politically reactionary. Schenker excuses Mozart’s attempts at operatic success as a product of his early Italian experiences and his constant need for money. As for Mozart’s statement, in a famous letter to his father, that operatic poetry must be subservient to the music, Schenker claims that this applies only to Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which Mozart was composing at the time he wrote the letter, and not to his later operas—​ not even to Don Giovanni, to which Schenker devotes much attention in this essay. Schenker writes of Don Giovanni, “the music appears so simple here that it is hard to believe that the same composer wrote that artistic body of work [Mozart’s instrumental music].”23 Here and in his other late operas (with the partial exception 20 Schenker, “On the Decline of the Art of Composition,” trans. William Drabkin, Music Analysis 24 (2005): 33–​129. The German original follows on 131–​232. 21 Schenker, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, trans. and ed. John Rothgeb (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). 22 Schenker, “Decline,” 80–​81. 23 Schenker, “Decline,” 85.

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  69 of Die Zauberflöte), Mozart gave “the music only as much as it needed for such ignorant theatregoers as are found in the opera house.”24 Like others before and since, Schenker connects the operatic revolutions of Gluck and Wagner. Both, he writes, aimed at dramatic truth, and both achieved it, but always at the expense of (purely) musical integrity. Schenker concludes: “Yes, from the standpoint of music, opera may be defined as the admission of inability, lack of aristocratism, and servitude before the audience.”25 “Servitude before the audience” summarizes Schenker’s objection to opera as an art: pleasing the audience should never be the point. To complain of a “lack of aristocratism” says much about Schenker’s view of his own place within human and artistic society: the son of a shtetl physician, he felt himself to be an aristocrat, at least in Herder’s sense. Schenker’s discussion of opera in Niedergang is devoted almost exclusively to German-​speaking composers: Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Meyerbeer, and Wagner. Rossini is mentioned only in relation to Wagner’s critique in Opera and Drama. Bellini receives a single, negative mention: the melody of the aria “Leise, leise” (from Der Freischütz) is said to be as “small-​minded” as Norma. Verdi’s name does not appear at all—​a striking change from Schenker’s extravagant praise of Falstaff a decade earlier. Schenker’s view of Meyerbeer may be of interest. Wagner’s critique of Meyerbeer clearly bothered him, especially the famous catchphrase “effect without cause” (Wirkung ohne Ursache). That Schenker knew at least one Meyerbeer opera well is clear from a 1927 diary entry: Radio: The Prophet, with Slesak, Olschewska, Nemeth, etc. The loudspeaker is ceremoniously tuned; it is as if we were sitting in the Opera House, the way in which the voices and orchestra sound. Lie-​Liechen [Schenker’s wife Jeanette] is listening to the work for the first time; I was merely recalling it from memory.

He continues with a moderately lengthy consideration of Meyerbeer the composer. The following passage addresses the question of “effect”: Actually it’s like this: one cannot resist the effect, and one notices only in retrospect that one had been taken in too cheaply; that is how securely his technique works. The instrumentation is not seldom without something excellent. The cantilenas are sufficiently distant from the Italian type; but also basically dissimilar to that of the French, from which such warmth and glow is missing. There is no doubt that Meyerbeer’s works are informed by German character, but in the context of an ill-​ fated tendency to play up to the French nature; thus they sacrifice themselves to a lower-​ranking French audience.26

24 Schenker, “Decline,” 93. 25 Schenker, “Decline,” 83. 26 Diary entry of 28 November 1927, trans. William Drabkin; Schenker Documents Online (https:// ​s che​n ker​ d ocu​ ment​ s onl​ ine.org/​ d ocume​ nts/​ d iar​ i es/​ OJ-​ 0 4-​ 0 1_​ 1 ​ 9 27-​ 1 1/​ r 0028.html, accessed 18 June 2021).

70  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Twenty years earlier, in Niedergang, Schenker had this to say: Each of his effects is, surely, as honestly conceived and carried out in theatrical terms as, say, one of Gluck’s. Does not his music still always arouse in his audience the feelings of dramatic truth? Do not The Huguenots and The Prophet create tension in the theatre? And where does the music contradict the text? Wherein is an artistic lie to be perceived? On the contrary, did he not often seek to arrive at the truth to the best of his ability, and often by the application of new orchestral effects? And if music does not in any way openly contradict dramatic truth, as is certainly not the case with Meyerbeer, then all music in opera must in every instance be perceived as true. Or, to put it in different terms: can one, then, speak about a type of music from any other point of view than a purely musical one, and is not dramatic truth of secondary importance to it? The deceitfulness of a melody rarely reveals itself; but its inferior construction is all too apparent. And it is for this reason that I believe that Wagner would have done better to speak about the latter rather than the former. Did not Meyerbeer do everything that he believed necessary to fulfill his theatrical obligations in the best faith? Must not the effect be heeded? Must not the great artistically ignorant masses not merely be persuaded about the effectiveness, but also forced to accept it? Are not all these things laws of the theatre, laws made by the audience, which must indeed be upheld? Then why fault a dramatic composer for fulfilling his obligations? Everything else, however, lies with the destructive character of the hybrid art in general, against which no dramatic composer can hold out, unless he is a Mozart who is capable of offering the intrinsic nobility of music some protection, at least, even from a theatre audience. I thus find it proper to leave the question of truth versus untruth in Meyerbeer out of consideration, and to develop consistently a musical standpoint, the measure of which must always remain absolute music viewed dispassionately—​ and nothing else.27

None of this seems promising for an application of Schenker’s ideas to Italian opera. Yet there are two factors, at least, that suggest a hidden affinity. The first is a theoretical perspective that Schenker could have learned from Sechter: a focus on melody itself as the bearer of harmony.28 The second is thoroughbass, which is deeply embedded in Schenker’s theory. In Harmony (1906), Schenker presents an unaccompanied melody similar to Sechter’s. Schenker’s example, given in example 3.1, is more interesting because the triadic outlines are less obvious. He comments: Example 3.1.  Schenker, Harmonielehre, 176 (English, 133)

27 Schenker, “Decline,” 96–​97. 28 The subject of harmony within single-​voiced melody is treated at length in Robert W. Wason and Matthew Brown, Heinrich Schenker’s Conception of Harmony (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020).

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  71 [O]‌ur ear will connect the first tone, G, with the B on the first quarter of measure 1 as the third of G. Likewise, it will connect that G with the D on the first quarter of measure 2 as its fifth. Our ear will establish this connection instinctively, but nonetheless in accordance with the demands of Nature. In an analogous way, it will link that first G with the C and E of the second half of measure 1 and thus form the concept of another triad. For our ear will miss no opportunity to hear such triads, no matter how far in the background of our consciousness this concept may lie hidden and no matter whether in the plan of the composition it is overshadowed by far more obvious and important relationships. The harmonic element thus has to be pursued in both dimensions, the horizontal as well as the vertical.29

Later in the same chapter, Schenker analyzes the English horn solo from act 3 of Wagner’s Tristan using the same method, but without explaining his analysis so thoroughly. Schenker discusses a different passage from Tristan in his chapter on modal mixture (example 3.2). After describing Wagner’s chords in relation to a mixture of C minor with C major, he turns his attention to the vocal line: If we now take a look at the solo voice, we shall notice that it does not reflect in its entirety the harmonic progression we have just analyzed. The solo voice lacks the chromatic tones C♯ and E♮ on the VI step. . . . Now, there was no binding reason for the composer to reflect the entire development in the solo voice. I should like to point out, nevertheless, that it could have been done. The effect would have been different. We are faced here with two alternative possibilities. In one case the harmonies, conceived in the vertical direction, appear, so to speak, unfolded in the horizontal flow of the melody; in the other case they are established merely vertically, in triads or seventh chords, without being confirmed, at the same time, in the melody.30

Schenker might have added that Wagner’s melody, taken by itself, outlines the diminished triad A♮–​C–​E♭ up until its final note, D. This triad is nowhere reflected in the accompanying harmonies. In this case, when “the harmonic element” is pursued in both horizontal and vertical dimensions, the results diverge.31 In ­chapter 1 I analyzed the melody of Verdi’s Anvil Chorus with reference to its melodically outlined harmonies, and I noted conflicts between these harmonies and those of the accompaniment. In c­ hapter 2 we saw how two nineteenth-​century theorists, Fétis and Basevi, discussed harmonic conflicts between melody and accompaniment. Schenker’s early method of melodic analysis shows him thinking along similar lines.

29 Schenker, Harmony, ed. Oswald Jonas, trans. Elisabeth Mann Borgese (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), 133–​34. 30 Schenker, Harmony, 107–​8. 31 Schenker never pursued the idea of harmonic conflict between horizontal and vertical in a systematic way, but Paul Hindemith did in The Craft of Musical Composition (vol. 1, trans. Arthur Mendel; rev. ed. New York, 1945).

72  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 3.2.  Schenker, Harmonielehre, 140–​41 (English, 107)

Schenker’s later concept of the linear progression—​his term is Zug, short for Stimmführungszug (“voice-​leading progression”)—​is another melodic expression of triadic harmony. It is often forgotten that Schenker conceived of the Urlinie, or fundamental melodic line, several years before he conceived of an Ursatz; he introduced the latter term in 1923, defining it as a contrapuntal setting (Satz) of the Urlinie.32 It is widely believed that the individual tones of a linear progression require specific kinds of harmonic support in order to exist. This view is largely false, and it imposes an inappropriately vertical conception of Schenker’s middleground and background levels as series of vertical chords or harmonic states.33 A linear progression, for Schenker, is the melodic traversal of a triadic interval, especially a traversal of that interval by step. To be sure, those composers 32 Schenker, Der Tonwille, vol. 1, ed. William Drabkin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 212. A valuable account of the Ursatz concept may be found in William Pastille, “The Development of the Ursatz in Schenker’s Published Works,” in Trends in Schenkerian Research, ed. Allen Cadwallader (New York: Schirmer Books, 1990), 71–​85. 33 The term “harmonic state” seems to have originated in William Benjamin, “Pitch-​Class Counterpoint in Tonal Music,” in Music Theory: Special Topics, ed. Richmond Browne (New York: Academic Press, 1981), 1–​32.

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  73 whom Schenker regarded as masters generally coordinated the linear progressions of their melodies with linear progressions in other voices, especially the bass, and with a coherent progression of harmonies. But this is a matter of coordination, not subordination. The horizontal dimension, for Schenker, is no more subordinated to the vertical than the vertical is to the horizontal. There is one exception: at the background level, the vertical tonic triad governs the sole linear progression that exists at that level, the Urlinie itself. All other harmonies in a work, including the V harmony in Schenker’s Ursatz, are as much the product of horizontal forces as they are generative in their own right. In his later writings, Schenker rarely returns to the theme of contradiction between the horizontal and vertical dimensions. His most explicit treatment of the subject occurs in his 1926 critique of a passage from Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds. Here again he considers a melodic line separately from its accompaniment, finding triadic outlines and linear progressions within Stravinsky’s melody, which he characterizes as derived from Russian folk song (recall that Schenker valued folk song). More ambiguously, he finds linear progressions in the bass. But he remarks disapprovingly at the way “[Stravinsky’s] treatment of the outer-​voice counterpoint, especially the bass, frustrates any articulation into linear progressions [in the melody].”34 He details specific notes in the lower and middle voices of Stravinsky’s three-​part counterpoint that contradict the linear progressions of the top-​voice melody; he also complains that the motivic content does not serve to clarify these linear progressions. In short, the melody’s linear progressions and implied harmonies exist despite an accompaniment that seeks to thwart them. Discussions of harmonic conflicts between melody and accompaniment are found only occasionally in writings by Schenker’s followers. Two such discussions stand out. The first, unfortunately brief, is by Carl Schachter; it occurs in a transcribed conversation with Joseph Straus.35 Schachter speaks of two works in which an important melodic motive outlines the tonic triad, but this triad conflicts with the accompanying harmonies in some part of the work. At the opening of Brahms’s Intermezzo in A Minor, op. 118, no. 1, the motive C–​B♭–​A–​E, descending, is set within the horizontal composing-​out of a C major triad; the melody’s A conflicts with the underlying triad, despite the literal presence of an A minor 63 chord in mm. 1–​2. The conflict is resolved late in the work, where the harmony shifts to A minor, supporting the melodically unfolded triad. In Chopin’s Mazurka in G♯ Minor, op. 33, no. 1, the motive of mm. 1–​4 outlines the tonic triad of G♯ minor, the key of the opening and closing sections. The middle section is in a different key, B major, but in mm. 20–​24 the opening motive is paraphrased (see example 3.3). The conflict between melody and accompaniment emerges in m. 24, where the motive D♯–​G♯–​D♯ occurs over a B major harmony. The G♯ may be understood as a supplente in Basevi’s sense, a substitute for the fifth of the B major triad, but its harmonic relation to the preceding and following D♯s creates an 34 Schenker, The Masterwork in Music, vol. 2, 17. I have slightly adjusted John Rothgeb’s translation. 35 Schachter, Unfoldings: Essays in Schenkerian Theory and Analysis, ed. Joseph N. Straus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 9.

74  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 3.3.  Chopin, Mazurka op. 33, no. 1, mm. 1–​4 and 20–​24

impression of interpenetration between the B major and G♯ minor triads, which share two common tones.36 A slightly different conflict is the subject of an article by Peter H. Smith.37 Smith examines cases in which, within a piece’s tonic-​oriented opening measures, a note not belonging to the tonic triad—2̂ or 6,̂ in Smith’s examples—​is prolonged through neighboring motion, arpeggiation, linear progression, or sheer repetition. Because, in a diatonic scale, any note that doesn’t belong to the tonic triad is located one step away from a note that does, the melodic prolongations identified by Smith involve the use of tonic-​triad notes as neighboring or passing tones, despite the presence of the tonic triad (or a tonic pedal) in the accompaniment. A dissonant note acts like a consonance, while a consonant note acts like a dissonance.38 Smith’s point, which he proffers in mild opposition to Schachter’s essay “Either/​Or,” is that 2̂ or 6̂ is best interpreted in such cases as both prolonged and passing/​neighboring, not only at different structural levels (which would not contravene Schenkerian principles) but at the same level. Either/​or is rejected in favor of both/​and. Smith’s most memorable example is the Scherzo from Schubert’s String Quintet, the opening of which is shown in example 3.4. Three of Smith’s graphs of 36 Compare the interpenetration of G major and E minor triads in Verdi’s Anvil Chorus, discussed in ­chapter 1. 37 Peter H. Smith, “Outer-​Voice Conflicts: Their Analytical Challenges and Artistic Consequences,” Journal of Music Theory 44 (2000): 1–​43. 38 Compare C. P. E. Bach’s description of the octave above the bass as a dissonance in the 7/​4/​2 chord. Bach, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, trans. William J. Mitchell (New York: W. W. Norton, 1949), 297.

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  75 Example 3.4.  Schubert, String Quintet, Scherzo, mm. 1–​24

76  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 3.4.  Continued

the passage are reproduced as example 3.5. From a strict point of view, the melody’s obsessively repeated D would have to be understood as passing between C and E, as in Smith’s graph no. 1. But the sheer weight of this D seems to draw C and E into its orbit as embellishing neighbors, as in graph no. 2. In that graph, Smith proposes to read the E of m. 8, seemingly a consonant resolution, as an upper neighbor to D.

Example 3.5.  Peter Smith’s graphs of ­example 3.4*

* from Peter H. Smith, “Outer-​Voice Conflicts: Their Analytical Challenges and Artistic Consequences,” in Journal of Music Theory 44, no. 1: 1–​43. Copyright 2000, Yale University Department of Music. All rights reserved. Republished by permission of the copyright holder and the Publisher. www.duk​eupr​ess.edu.

78  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera (D is consonantly harmonized when it returns at m. 17.) Bolder still is graph no. 3, where the E of mm. 8 and 12–​13 is understood as passing upward to F, so that a third-​progression, D–​E–​F, clashes with the underlying tonic harmony. Whether or not one agrees with Smith that the three readings in example 3.5 are simultaneously valid, his graphs nos. 2–​ 3 express the kind of melodic independence that I described in ­chapter 1. This is a useful perspective for a genre, such as nineteenth-​century Italian opera, in which melody often dominates. Thoroughbass, or basso continuo, forms the second link between Schenker and nineteenth-​century Italian composers. As we have seen, eighteenth-​century methods and aesthetics survived longer in Italy than they did in Germany. Thoroughbass, especially in the form of partimento, was one token of this historical continuity; it survived in Italy in both improvised and written forms nearly to the end of the nineteenth century.39 Schenker did not encounter thoroughbass as a living tradition; he was self-​taught in the subject. So far as I am aware, he was familiar only with J. S. Bach’s so-​called Generalbassbüchlein, published in 1880 as part of Philipp Spitta’s biography, and C. P. E. Bach’s Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments. J. S. Bach’s manual, which is largely cribbed from Friedrich Niedt’s The Musical Guide, is aimed at beginners, but C. P. E. Bach’s work is far more comprehensive; significantly, it links thoroughbass to improvisation and thus, indirectly, to composition. Unfortunately, Schenker did not know Heinichen’s Der General-​Bass in der Composition, which would have interested him a great deal. Schenker concerned himself intensively with continuo realization in the first years of the twentieth century, when he prepared performing arrangements of works by J. S. Bach, Handel, and C. P. E. Bach; these include a published arrangement of Handel’s Six Organ Concertos, op. 4, for piano four hands.40 Schenker’s realizations seem always to have been written out, not improvised. In 1910, his friend and student Moriz Violin published a pamphlet entitled Über das sogenannte Continuo; Ein Beitrag zur Lösung des Problems (“On the so-​called continuo: An attempt to solve the problem”), in connection with a planned concert in which some of Schenker’s arrangements were to have been performed (the concert never took place).41 Violin’s pamphlet addresses general issues of continuo realization and discusses surviving realizations by Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber (a student of J. S. Bach), Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. Violin ends by praising Schenker’s realizations for, among other things, giving the continuo accompaniment motivic life—​sometimes imitating the composed parts, sometimes pursuing its own motives independently. Embedding motivic imitations into continuo realizations was a hallmark of the partimento tradition, although Schenker probably did not know this. After 1910, Schenker’s involvement with thoroughbass became more a matter of theory and pedagogy rather than practical performance, although he made an arrangement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 5 in 1923, including 39 See Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions. Baragwanath’s recent book The Solfeggio Tradition reminds us that hexachordal solmization also persisted far longer in Italy than elsewhere. 40 Vienna: Universal-​Edition, 1904. 41 Vienna: Universal-​Edition, 1910.

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  79 a realization of the continuo part.42 Certain of his students of the 1920s, especially Reinhard Oppel and Gerhard Albersheim, prepared written-​ out continuo realizations that Schenker corrected. The incomplete and unpublished first version of Schenker’s Der freie Satz, written around 1917, includes a chapter on thoroughbass, and Schenker prepared an extensive commentary on the thoroughbass portion of C. P. E. Bach’s Essay. These writings treat thoroughbass from a theoretical rather than a practical point of view, so they stand rather far from the Italian tradition. When writing about thoroughbass, Schenker treats it primarily as a component of Baroque music. Yet he regarded C. P. E. Bach’s Essay as having relevance beyond its own time, especially in establishing principles of voice leading and promoting an improvisatory attitude toward composition. Thoroughbass, as formulated by C. P. E. Bach, remained relevant to Schenker’s analytical approach as it developed following World War I. In his 1924 analysis of the accompanied recitative “Erbarm’ es Gott” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Schenker reduces the string parts to a chordal accompaniment that strongly resembles an organ realization of the basso continuo; he then traces the relation of the vocal line to the voice leading of this realization.43 In his 1925 essay on the Largo from Bach’s Sonata no. 3 for solo violin (BWV 1005), he discusses Robert Schumann’s piano accompaniment to this movement, remarking that it does not “limit itself to a more or less free realization of an imagined figured bass,” as it might have done.44 Schenker’s conception of musical texture—​his idea of the ways in which melody, inner voices, and bass relate to each other—​was crucially shaped by his involvement with thoroughbass as practical accompaniment, pedagogical tool, and object of theoretical study. After the early 1920s, he came to focus less on chord roots and more on the actual bass line—​less, in other words, on the basso fondamentale and more on the basso continuo. Thus, for example, he came to regard a stepwise bass ascent from tonic to dominant as structurally determinative to the shape of a phrase or an entire piece, while the specific chords on degrees 2, 3, and 4 were of lesser moment. iii and I6 became more or less interchangeable, like IV and ii6, so that I and I6 came to be viewed as functionally distinct.45 By focusing on the bass melody rather than a succession of abstract fundamentals, Schenker moved closer to the partimento tradition, especially the regola dell’ottava. Schenker’s outer-​voice framework, the Aussensatz, is a shared framework for both his and traditional Italian conceptions of musical texture. 42 Several of Schenker’s diary entries from 1923 mention this arrangement. When, in 1928, Wilhelm Furtwängler performed the concerto, Schenker criticized Furtwängler’s realization of the continuo part and his performance of the cadenza. Diary entry for 15 February 1928; Schenker Documents Online (https://​sche​nker​docu​ment​sonl​ine.org/​docume​nts/​diar​ies/​OJ-​04-​01_​1​928-​04/​r0015.html, accessed 9 July 2021). 43 Schenker, Der Tonwille, vol. 2, ed. William Drabkin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 66–​67. 44 Schenker, The Masterwork in Music, vol. 1, 36. 45 I explore the functions of I6 in “All That Is Solid Melts into Air: Schumann’s Overture to Manfred,” in Explorations in Schenkerian Analysis, ed. David Beach and Su Yin Mak (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2016), 155–​76; 168–​70.

80  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera The detailed analyses in parts II–​IV will show the uses to which I put Schenker’s analytical method. I focus, like Schenker, on melody and bass, but I treat each of these voices as musically generative, sometimes independently. Despite his latitudinarian treatment of Wagner in Harmony,46 for the later Schenker melody and bass were indissolubly linked except in the case of composers, like Stravinsky and Reger, whom Schenker regarded as incompetent.47

Riemann, Paleo-​and Neo-​ J. S. Bach and Hugo Riemann were born in Thuringia, spent much of their professional lives in Leipzig, and were astonishingly productive.48 But the similarities end there. Riemann set out to destroy what he called “thoroughbass methods,” by which he meant not only thoroughbass proper but also the fundamental-​bass conception of harmony that, in the nineteenth century, was represented by the Roman-​numeral methods of Gottfried Weber and Simon Sechter. The bass plays no special role in Riemann’s harmonic universe. For an exercise in four-​part writing, no voice need be given, only a succession of chord symbols, with inversions (if any) left to the student’s discretion.49 Riemann’s de-​ emphasis of the bass is connected to his dualist approach to harmony, according to which major triads are generated upward from what is conventionally called a root—​Rameau’s fundamental bass—​while minor triads are generated downward from what is usually called the fifth; in both cases, Riemann refers to the generating note as the chord’s “prime” (Prim).50 Upward and downward directions are regarded as equal in significance and equally generative. In a musical texture, no voice is inherently foundational. This is a radical reconceptualization of music’s harmonic texture, and it obviously conflicts with traditional Italian methods, which focus on melody and bass while distinguishing their functions. One exception to that separation of voice functions, as we have seen, is cantus firmus technique, a survivor from the pre-​thoroughbass era.51 Because cantus firmus methods played a larger role in Italian than in German pedagogy, and because a cantus firmus may be placed in any voice, a cantus firmus allows the composer to crystallize a musical texture around a melodic line in any voice—​soprano, alto, tenor, or bass.

46 See example 3.2 above. 47 Schenker, “A Counter-​Example: Reger’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach, op. 81, for Piano,” trans. John Rothgeb, in The Masterwork in Music, vol. 2, 106–​17. 48 Many of the ideas in this section may be found in fleshed-​out form in Edward Gollin and Alexander Rehding, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Neo-​Riemannian Music Theories (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). See especially the essays by Nora Engebretsen and David Kopp. 49 See the six editions (1887–​1917) of Riemann’s Handbuch der Harmoniehlehre, itself a revision of his Skizze einer neuen Methode der Harmonielehre (Leipzig, 1880). 50 In his earlier writings, Riemann uses the term Hauptton (“main tone”) instead of Prim. 51 See c­ hapter 2.

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  81 Despite his pedagogical use of part-​writing exercises in the traditional four voices, Riemann places less emphasis than the Italians on the literal progression of any voice, except as it relates to the thematic—​and thus the formal—​aspect of a composition. Some of Riemann’s analyses of the preludes in Bach’s Well-​Tempered Clavier exhibit skeletal melodic lines comparable to the mostly stepwise melodic lines in Schenker’s voice-​leading graphs from the early 1920s, but this is an experiment Riemann seems not to have repeated.52 Such skeletal melodies relate to the Italians’ use of embellishing formulas—​also known as diminutions—​to flesh out scalar and sequential melodic patterns, something that Baragwanath has demonstrated for the music of Puccini and earlier Italians. Schenker pursued diminution more or less systematically as part of his theory; Riemann did not. Where Riemann’s theory excels is in relating chords to each other, especially when those chords are conceived as collections of pitch classes, with or without reference to a given key. Reference to a key is, of course, essential to Riemann’s theory of harmonic functions: tonic, dominant, and subdominant. Keylessness is, if not the logical basis, the logical result of Riemann’s system of harmonic steps (Harmonieschritte), which includes both “steps” (Schritte) and “reversals” (Wechsel). A “step” is a motion from one triad to another of the same quality; a “reversal” involves a change of quality, from major to minor or vice versa.53 I prefer “reversal” to “change,” the usual translation of Riemann’s Wechsel, because there are only two possible values, major and minor, and they are conceived as opposites, like north and south magnetic poles or positive and negative terminals on an old-​ fashioned battery. A Wechsel reverses the current. Schritte and Wechsel are measured according to the directed interval from the prime of the first triad to the prime of the second triad. Thus, for example, a motion from A minor (prime: E) to F minor (prime: C) involves the interval of a descending major third, E→C, which was already generated from E through its series of undertones. (Undertones, which do not exist physically, are the opposite of overtones: an undertone series “generates” a minor triad downward, and its intervals get smaller as they descend.) The motion in question is classified by Riemann as a Terzschritt or “[major-​]third-​step.” The word Schritt indicates that the two triads are of the same quality; the unmodified Terz indicates the major third, because only the major third is generated by the prime as an over-​or undertone.54 A further refinement addresses whether the interval of motion is with or against the direction of the first triad’s generation: the former situation is described as schlicht (“direct” or “simple”), the latter as gegen (“counter to” or “against”). Thus, a motion from A minor (prime: E) to C♯ minor (prime: G♯) would have as its interval of motion the ascending major third E→G♯, which goes against the downward generation of the first triad. The prefix gegen-​ must therefore be 52 Riemann, Katechismus der Fugen-​Komposition (Leipzig, 1890). 53 As Gollin and Rehding point out, Riemann’s system of Harmonieschritte was modeled on Arthur von Oettingen’s Harmoniesystem in dualer Entwicklung (Dorpat [Tartu, Estonia], 1866). 54 A minor third is a Kleinterz, literally “small third,” and is regarded by Riemann as derived from the major sixth, because the major sixth appears between partials 3 and 5 whereas the minor third appears later in the harmonic series, between partials 5 and 6.

82  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera added to the description, and the move is classified as a Gegenterzschritt (“counter-​ [major-​]third step”). The Schritt/​Wechsel nomenclature can be cumbersome, as Riemann admits.55 He downplays the fact that his Harmonieschritte float free of any concept of key, but for neo-​Riemannians this is a feature, not a bug. Using the Harmonieschritte, one can classify the motion from any major or minor triad to any other, and the classifications do not change if one retains the same triads but assumes a different key. They do change, however, if one respells a chord enharmonically: to Riemann, the motion from E to G♯ is a major third upward, but the motion from E to A♭ is two major thirds downward. The tuning is different, too, because Riemann assumes just intonation. Each interval in Riemann’s system is harmonically generated, not merely posited.56 For the reasons just given, Riemann’s Schritt/​Wechsel system, and the Riemann-​ inspired LPR system developed by Richard Cohn and others, are precise yet relatively neutral ways to describe triadic relations.57 The LPR system is a little more key-​dependent than the Schritt/​Wechsel system, but even it makes key a matter of, at most, chord-​to-​chord relations.58 If a major or minor triad is understood to represent a key of the same name, Riemannian or neo-​Riemannian systems can be used—​and have often been used—​to model key relations.59 For those who haven’t dipped into neo-​Riemannian alphabet soup, here is a primer. L stands for Leittonwechsel, “leading-​tone reversal,” and it involves replacing the prime of a triad with its leading tone, leading tones being a semitone below the prime of a major triad and a semitone above the prime of a minor triad. The result is a triad of the opposite quality; hence “reversal.” P stands for the English “parallel,” which exchanges a triad for its parallel major or minor; Riemann’s term for this is Variante. R stands for “relative,” which exchanges a triad for its relative major or minor; Riemann’s term for this is (confusingly!) Parallel. Another neo-​ Riemannian transformation is N for nebenverwandt (“next-​related” or “adjacent”), which preserves a prime while flipping the triad around it, as in A major→D minor or D minor→A major; Riemann’s term for this is Seitenwechsel (“lateral reversal”). Another is SLIDE, which preserves the third of a triad while moving the other two notes by a chromatic semitone to form a triad of the opposite quality, as in E minor→E♭ major or the reverse. Transformations may be compounded: RP, for example, takes the relative of the starting triad, then the parallel of the triad that results from R. The order matters: PR yields a different result. 55 See the long footnote in Riemann, Handbuch der Harmonielehre, 5th ed. (Leipzig, 1912), 91. 56 Riemann, Handbuch, 5th ed., 116. 57 Cohn’s major work in neo-​Riemannian theory (a term he now rejects) is Audacious Euphony: Chromatic Harmony and the Triad’s Second Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 58 P and R derive from Riemann’s system of harmonic functions and are thus tied to the notion of key. L derives from the Schritt/​Wechsel system, but the notion of “leading tone” introduces an implicit hierarchy, giving a prime the status of a local tonic. 59 For a nuanced defense of this contested usage, see Cohn’s essay in The Oxford Companion to Neo-​ Riemannian Music Theories.

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  83 Example 3.6.  Centrifugal and centripetal progressions that represent identical transformations

Is there any advantage to labeling chord-​or key-​progressions in these ways, beyond the sheer pleasure of naming things? I see at least two. First, labeling provides ways to see similarities between progressions that, from another perspective, might seem dissimilar. To take a simple case, I–​IV and V–​I are functionally distinct, respectively T–​S and D–​T, but transformationally identical; both represent Riemann’s Gegenquintschritt or Cohn’s RL transformation. I–​♭VI and III♯–​I are similarly dissimilar in that one is centrifugal, the other centripetal; yet, as in the previous case, the progressions are transpositions of each other and therefore identical transformationally (both are Gegenterzschritte, PL in neo-​ Riemannian terms). Less obviously, going from C minor to A major is like going from C major to E♭ minor. Here the relation is inversional rather than transpositional, but the transformations are identical: both represent Riemann’s Gegenganztonwechsel or the compound transformation PRP. Example 3.6 spells out the Ls, Rs, and Ps in a step-​by-​step manner; the choice of bass notes (chord inversions) is arbitrary. A second advantage is the ease with which one can describe the chromatic and enharmonic juxtapositions typical of much nineteenth-​ century music. Nineteenth-​century chromaticism helped to motivate Riemann’s Schritt/​Wechsel system, which predates his system of harmonic functions. His system of functions has a built-​in diatonic bias—​tonic, dominant, and subdominant triads together form a diatonic scale—​but the Schritt/​Wechsel system does not; nor, on the whole, does the LPR system that was designed to replace it. The transformations L, P, and R operate with reference to some diatonic scale (N and SLIDE do not), but any combination that includes P produces chromatic results.60 Yet the boundary between diatonicism and chromaticism, so important to nineteenth-​century

60 In his early writings Schenker distinguished chromaticism from modal mixture, but I will not do so here.

84  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera theorists, is often ignored in neo-​Riemannian writings, which privilege equal-​ tempered chromaticism. Enharmonics also distinguish paleo-​from neo-​ Riemannian systems. Neo-​ Riemannian theorists, reared on pitch-​class-​set theory, easily assume enharmonic equivalence, so the LPR system operates over a set of twelve pitch classes. Riemann admitted enharmonic transformation into his system of harmonic functions, but never enharmonic equivalence; his two systems, based in principle on just intonation, regard enharmonically related pitches as conceptually distinct. For Riemann there are many more than twelve pitch classes, indeed a potentially infinite number, because C♯♯ is not the same note as D♮, and C♯♯♯ is distinct from both D♯ and E♭. Given the frequency with which nineteenth-​century composers invoked enharmony, the LPR system proves a more efficient means to describe sudden motions to distant keys and harmonies. Yet other systems, including Riemann’s own, may be better placed to tease out enharmonic subtleties and their affective meanings. Some of the most musically satisfying theories that derive from Riemann’s work have addressed issues of dual or multiple functions. The Harmonielehre of Rudolf Louis and Ludwig Thuille is an outstanding early example.61 Louis and Thuille use Roman-​numeral labeling rather than Riemann’s function symbols, but they subscribe wholeheartedly to functional thinking. They often indicate two or three functional interpretations for a single chord, sometimes invoking a similar number of keys. A good example is their interpretation of the “Fate” motive from Wagner’s Ring cycle. Example 3.7 shows the motive as it appears at the beginning of the “Annunciation of Death” scene from Die Walküre, act 2: Example 3.7.  Rudolf Louis and Ludwig Thuille, Harmonielehre (7th ed.), 376

Louis and Thuille’s analysis reveals that the opening sonority is, from one point of view, a D minor triad, which they regard as a presumptive tonic, d:I. (Like Sechter, Louis and Thuille use only upper-​case Roman numerals.) From a different and slightly larger point of view, the A of this triad acts as an appoggiatura to the G♯ at the end of the measure. From this perspective, the harmony is not a D minor triad but an incomplete diminished-​seventh chord (the missing note is B). Because this chord resolves to f♯:V, the first measure’s F♮ simultaneously represents E♯, a common tone in the progression, and the harmony represents f♯:VII. (Again like Sechter, Louis and Thuille omit sevenths from their Roman-​numeral symbols.) 61 Rudolf Louis and Ludwig Thuille, Harmonielehre (Stuttgart, 1907). References in the following discussion will be to the fourth edition (Stuttgart, 1913).

  Theoretical Contexts II  T  85 Elsewhere in their book, the authors explain that the leading-​tone seventh chord in the minor mode balances dominant function, represented by ♯7̂ and 2̂, with subdominant function, represented by 4 ̂ and 6 ̂, so the chord can represent either function equally well. In this case, the chord D–​E♯–​G♯–​(B) acts as a subdominant substitute in F♯ minor, although the authors do not provide their usual symbol for this substitution, which would be f♯:VII (IV).62 Four ambiguities of harmonic meaning go unresolved in the “Fate” motive: (1) the first chord both is and is not a D minor triad; (2) the middle note of that chord is simultaneously F, a consonant minor third above the bass D, and E♯, a dissonant augmented second; (3) A is both a chordal fifth and an appoggiatura to G♯; and (4) the G♯ at the end of the first measure is both chord tone and échappée. All of these things are true at the same time.63 The passage is a nice example of what the conductor Julius Schaeffer wrote in 1852 of Wagner’s harmony, specifically that of Lohengrin: in Wagner’s music, all keys are related to each other; any key may succeed any other; juxtapositions of seemingly distant triads are an everyday matter.64 Following in the steps of Louis and Thuille and others (including Rameau), Daniel Harrison presents a theory in which not only chords but individual notes of chords may exhibit tonic, dominant, or subdominant functions; consequently, Harrison speaks of functional mixture.65 Although he does not discuss our Wagner excerpt, Harrison would regard Wagner’s bass line, D–​C♯, as a motion from subdominant to dominant, S–​D, in F♯ minor; E♯ and G♯ as dominant representatives, respectively “agent” and “associate” of the dominant root; and B as a mild-​ mannered subdominant spy within the dominant camp. The initial A of the melody, as 3̂ in F♯ minor, must be taken to represent tonic function insofar as the first measure is heard in that key; the motion A–​G♯, 3̂–2̂, thus represents the functional progression T–​D. If the middle note in the first chord is acknowledged as in some sense an F♮, as it surely sounds initially,66 this is a chromatically altered 1̂ in F♯ minor, and the D minor chord is an altered VI, possessing a high degree of tonic function—​ courtesy of degrees ♭1̂ and 3̂—​ despite the presence of the subdominant agent in the bass. In the key of D minor, of course, a D minor triad has tonic function. 62 In the first edition (1907), the same example is analyzed differently. The first chord is spelled with an E♯, as it is in the published vocal score (arranged by Karl Klindworth); the chord’s identity as a D minor triad is not acknowledged. Thuille died before the first edition appeared, so this and all other revisions were made by Louis. 63 Compare Richard Cohn’s discussion of the “Tarnhelm” motive in Audacious Euphony, 22–​23. 64 Julius Schaeffer, “Über Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin, mit Bezug auf seine Schrift: ‘Oper und Drama,” Neue Berliner Musikzeitung VI (1852), 153ff.; 162. Wagner both praised and criticized Schaeffer’s article, and Wagner’s friend Theodor Uhlig replied to it in print. See the discussion in John Deathridge, “Through the Looking Glass: Some Remarks on the First Complete Draft of Lohengrin,” in Analyzing Opera, ed. Abbate and Parker, 56–​91; 68–​70. 65 Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music, 60–​71 and passim. 66 The preceding chord is e:V7, with melodic emphasis on the seventh, A. If that chord’s D♯ is heard to descend to D♮, its F♯ will be heard similarly to descend to F♮, not E♯. The tendency of A to resolve downward to G or G♯ has been preprogrammed, so to speak, by its appearance as a chordal seventh, although Wagner’s music blunts the predictability of seventh-​resolutions.

86  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Kevin Swinden has developed further the notion of functional mixture, using a four-​function approach in which the function of “dominant preparation” is separated from that of “subdominant.”67 The latter term now refers exclusively to plagal progressions (S–​T) rather than, as in Riemann, location to the flat side of the tonic (regardless of progression). Swinden introduces symbols such as DS and SD to indicate, while distinguishing, primary and secondary functions of chords that exhibit functional mixture. David Kopp has theorized the prominent role that chromatic mediants play in music of the early and mid-​ nineteenth century. As presented in his PhD dissertation, his theory was only loosely connected to the neo-​ Riemannian enterprise,68 but his book Chromatic Transformations in Nineteenth-​Century Music is explicitly transformational and neo-​Riemannian. Kopp’s main argument is that, for nineteenth-​century music, third-​relations such as I–​III♯ and I–​♭VI should be conceived as single, not compound motions, because composers used and presumably heard them that way. (In the LPR system, I–​III♯ and I–​♭VI represent two-​step transformations, LP and PL respectively. Similarly, the progression V–​I represents RL, a two-​step transformation, counterintuitive as that is from a thoroughbass perspective.) Riemann came to the same conclusion near the end of his life, introducing new functional symbols for III♯ and ♭VI in the sixth edition of Handbuch der Harmonielehre (1917). One might use Kopp’s argument against the view, advanced by Charles Rosen, that the progression III♯–​I is “really” V/​vi–​I. V/​vi (read “V of vi”) is a compound relation, relating III♯ to the tonic only indirectly, by means of a tonicized submediant that doesn’t appear.69 While Rosen was writing about eighteenth-​century music, the issue is a significant one for Italian opera of the primo ottocento. Rossini, in particular, showed a great predilection for the progression III♯–​I.70

67 Kevin Swinden, “When Functions Collide: Aspects of Plural Function in Chromatic Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 27 (2005): 249–​82. 68 Kopp, “A Comprehensive Theory of Chromatic Mediant Relations in Mid-​Nineteenth-​Century Music” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1995). 69 Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 262–​72. 70 See c­ hapter 6. Schenker discusses tonicization by descending major third in Harmony, 265–​68.

C HA P T E R

Four

Rhythm and Meter

In ­chapter 2 we considered some nineteenth-​century theories of rhythm, with special emphasis on Bonifazio Asioli. The present chapter begins by exploring Italian versification and its relation to Asioli’s theory. It then considers the rhythmic and metric structures of Italian operatic music from Paisiello to Verdi. In addition to nineteenth-​century theories, selected writings since 1950 are brought to bear on the subject. The postwar period has been a fruitful one for studies of rhythm and meter. In North America, the trend began in the 1950s with essays by Edward Lowinsky and Jan LaRue.1 Between 1960 and 1985, important monographs were published by Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer, Edward T. Cone, Peter Westergaard, Maury Yeston, and the team of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff.2 Carl Schachter published a trilogy of essays, which were reprinted in his book Unfoldings.3 The late 1980s saw the publication of Joel Lester’s The Rhythms of Tonal Music and my Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music; both are accessible to non-​specialists.4 The tempo of publication increased after 1990, owing in part to a turn toward empirical methods that Lerdahl and Jackendoff helped to inspire. Outstanding contributions from recent decades include Christopher Hasty’s Meter as Rhythm, Justin London’s Hearing in Time, Danuta Mirka’s Metric Manipulation in Haydn and Mozart, and a series of studies by David Temperley.5 1 Edward Lowinsky, “On Mozart’s Rhythm,” Musical Quarterly 42 (1956): 162–​ 86; Jan LaRue, “Harmonic Rhythm in the Beethoven Symphonies,” Music Review 18 (1957): 8–​20. 2 Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer, The Rhythmic Structure of Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Edward T. Cone, Musical Form and Musical Performance (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968); Peter Westergaard, An Introduction to Tonal Theory (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975); Maury Yeston, The Stratification of Musical Rhythm (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976); Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983). 3 The essays originally appeared in Vols. 4–​6 of The Music Forum (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976–​1983). 4 Joel Lester, The Rhythms of Tonal Music (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986); William Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1989). 5 Christopher Hasty, Meter as Rhythm (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Justin London, Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Danuta Mirka, Metric Manipulation in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787–​1791 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); and David Temperley, The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001); “End-​Accented Phrases: An Analytical Exploration,” Journal of Music Theory 47 (2003): 125–​54; “Hypermetrical Transitions,” Music Theory Spectrum 30 (2008): 305–​25; and “Modeling Common-​Practice Rhythm,” Music Perception 27 (2010): 355–​76. The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0005

88  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Before 2000, most North American work on rhythm focused on instrumental music by Austro-​German composers. More recently there has been a surge of interest in German Lieder, evident in the work of Harald Krebs, Yonatan Malin, and Robert Snarrenberg.6 Vocal music in Italian has been comparatively neglected. The most important studies in this area originated in the 1970s: Robert Moreen’s PhD dissertation on early Verdi and Wye Jamison Allanbrook’s book on rhythmic topoi in two Mozart operas.7 Unlike the North American scene, vocal music has been a central concern of postwar German scholarship on rhythm and meter, beginning with Thrasybulos Georgiades’s writings on Mozart’s operas and Schubert’s songs.8 Georgiades’s work was followed, and in some sense continued, by Friedrich Lippmann, Reinhard Strohm, Manfred Hermann Schmid, and others. Much of this scholarship has centered on opera in Italian. James Webster’s essay “The Analysis of Mozart’s Arias” includes a concise introduction to this line of thought.9 Recent Italian writings on rhythm include Paolo Fabbri’s Metro e canto nell’opera italiana and an essay by Lorenzo Bianconi on Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri.10 Fabbri’s book concerns libretti mostly, but it has implications for musical analysis. Bianconi’s essay is discussed later in this chapter.

Poetic Meters and Their Musical Settings A discussion of rhythm in Italian opera must begin with the rhythms of Italian poetry. Italian operatic poetry was highly conventionalized by the middle of the eighteenth century.11 Aria texts are usually divided into stanzas of equal length. Changes of meter within a stanza are exceptional; by the early nineteenth century, entire movements generally adhere to a single poetic meter. The eleven-​syllable line

6 Yonatan Malin, Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Robert Snarrenberg, “On the Prosody of German Lyric Song,” Journal of Music Theory 58 (2014): 103–​54. Harald Krebs has published many studies of declamation in German Lieder, including “Treading Robert Schumann’s New Path: Understanding Declamation in the Late Lieder through Analysis and Recomposition,” Music Theory Online 20, no. 4 (December 2014). 7 Robert Moreen, “Integration of Text Forms and Musical Forms in Verdi’s Early Operas” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1975); Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 8 Thrasybulos Georgiades, “Aus der Musiksprache des Mozart-​Theaters,” Mozart-​Jahrbuch 1950, 76–​ 104; rept. in Georgiades, Kleine Schriften (Tutzing: Schneider, 1977), 9–​ 32; Georgiades, Schubert: Musik und Lyrik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1967). 9 Webster, “The Analysis of Mozart’s Arias,” in Mozart Studies, ed. Cliff Eisen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 101–​99. 10 Paolo Fabbri, Metro e canto nell’opera italiana (Turin: EDT, 2007); trans. Kenneth Chalmers as “Metrical and Formal Organization,” in Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 151–​219; Bianconi, “‘Confusi e stupidi’: di uno stupefacente (e banalissimo) dispositivo metrico,” in Gioachino Rossini 1792–​1992: il testo e la scena, ed. Paolo Fabbri (Pesaro: Fondazione Rossini, 1994), 129–​61. 11 Fabbri, “Metrical and Formal Organization,” 178–​84.

  Rhythm and Meter  T  89 or endecasillabo, favored by classic Italian poets, was mostly reserved for recitatives, where it alternated freely with lines of seven syllables in the style known as verso sciolto (free verse).12 Versi sciolti are mostly unrhymed, although they often end with a rhyming couplet. Versi lirici—​lyric verses—​use end-​rhyme in some systematic way. Italian verse meters are denominated according to the number of syllables per line—​not, as in German and English, on the number of poetic feet. In versi lirici, common line-​lengths range from the five-​syllable quinario through senario (six syllables), settenario (seven), and ottonario (eight), to the longer decasillabo (ten). The nine-​syllable novenario was little used until late in the nineteenth century. Aside from the number of syllables, the most important aspect of a line’s rhythm is the way in which it ends. The normal line-​ending is the piano or “plain” ending, in which the accent falls on the penultimate syllable, as in the word piano. If two unaccented syllables follow the accent, the ending is called sdrucciolo or “slippery”; again, the word itself exemplifies the rhythm. Of special significance is the tronco or “truncated” ending, in which the final syllable is accented, sometimes because a following unstressed syllable has been omitted: amor and signor, for example, instead of amore and signore. When one counts syllables to determine the poetic meter, versi piani—​lines with piano endings—​provide the model. Versi sdruccioli have one syllable too many, versi tronchi one syllable too few, but both are counted as though they were versi piani. Settenari may thus contain six, seven, or eight syllables depending on the line-​ending used, but all are considered seven-​syllable lines. The significance of versi tronchi lies in the fact that, because the final syllable in a line is accented, a melodic phrase can end on a strong beat. This maximizes the effect of closure, especially if the line-​ending is accompanied by a harmonic cadence. Piano and sdrucciolo endings require one or more notes to follow the final accent, weakening the effect of closure. If the line ends with a cadence, the accompaniment will arrive at the cadential harmony on a strong beat, but the vocal phrase will end one or more notes later. Fabbri, Webster, and Schmid have emphasized the importance of versi tronchi for the musical construction of operatic pieces.13 Librettists tended to reserve the tronco ending for the final line of a stanza, using it as a signal of closure within the poetic form. Composers did similarly for the musical form, using a verso tronco to mark the end of a musical period or section.14 The end of a section was marked with a strong cadence, either a perfect authentic cadence (PAC) or an emphatic half cadence. An important distinction exists between meters with even and odd numbers of syllables.15 Even-​numbered meters—​senario, ottonario, and decasillabo—​have a 12 This description fits most recitatives from the period covered by this book. In earlier and later Italian opera, a wider range of possibilities existed for both endecasillabo and verso sciolto. 13 Fabbri, 165–​66; Webster, 138; Manfred Hermann Schmid, Italienischer Vers und musikalische Syntax in Mozarts Opern (Tutzing: Schneider, 1994), 53ff. 14 The eighteenth-​century period is not the same as the period form described by Arnold Schoenberg and William Caplin. It may contain any number of phrases. 15 The account given here is based on Asioli and Moreen. For a slightly different perspective see Scott Balthazar, “The Rhythm of Text and Music in Ottocento Melody: An Empirical Reassessment in Light of Contemporary Treatises,” Current Musicology 49 (1990): 5–​28.

90  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera fixed number of accents, and those accents inhabit fixed locations within the poetic line. In senari and ottonari, each line is divided into two similar halves, with an accent on the penultimate syllable in each half—​syllables 2 and 5 in senari, syllables 3 and 7 in ottonari. Decasillabi have three accents, equally spaced, on syllables 3, 6, and 9. In any even-​numbered meter, a line normally begins with an unaccented syllable, suggesting a melodic upbeat. Odd-​numbered meters are more fluid in their accentual shape. In settenari, syllable 6 is always accented, syllable 4 normally so; either of the first two syllables might also be accented. In quinari, the first accent falls on syllable 1 or 2; the second and final accent falls on syllable 4. Asioli coined the term accento comune (“common accent”) to denote the final accent in any poetic line. “Common” means that this accent, on the penultimate syllable of a verso piano, is common to all poetic meters. Nineteenth-​ century writers rarely compare the strengths of accents within a poetic line, but Asioli at least implies that the accento comune is the strongest accent because it is the only one that he requires to fall on the downbeat of a measure. Carlo Ritorni, who knew Asioli’s work but used different terms, called the final accent “indispensable,” a word he does not apply to other accents.16 The accento comune also supplies the core syllable in end-​rhyme. Richard Wagner complained of poetry in Romance languages that the entire line forms an “elongated upbeat” to the end-​rhyme.17 Short lines are sometimes doubled: two quinari, senari, or settenari may appear as a single quinario doppio, senario doppio, or settenario doppio. Settenari doppi are also called versi martelliani. When lines are doubled, each of the original lines retains its accentual pattern, including its own accento comune, but only the end of the doubled line participates in the rhyme scheme. A quinario doppio thus has, at a minimum, accents on syllables 4 and 9. This pattern distinguishes quinario doppio from decasillabo, which has its accents on syllables 3, 6, and 9. Examples 4.1–​4.2 are reproduced from Asioli; they show early nineteenth-​ century settings of senari and ottonari respectively. Each of these meters has two main accents, a secondary accent (a term I borrow from Moreen) and the accento comune. Typically, the two accented syllables are placed on the downbeats of consecutive measures, as Asioli indicates with small Arabic numerals above the vocal melody. The accento comune coincides with the strong impulse, or 1o, of Asioli’s ritmo armonico; the secondary accent may fall on either impulse, 1o or 2o. The resulting melodic units—​two measures long in these examples—​are identified by Asioli as phrases (frasi). Equating the poetic

16 Carlo Ritorni, Ammaestramenti alla composizione d’ogni poema e d’ogni opera (Milan, 1841), 106; quoted in Balthazar, “The Rhythm of Text and Music,” 8. 17 Wagner, Oper und Drama, Part III (Leipzig, 1852), 15: “Der Endreim erhielt somit . . . eine so wichtige Bedeutung für den Sprachvers, daß alle Sylben der Verszeile nur wie ein vorbereitender Angriff auf die Schlußsylbe, wie ein verlängerter Auftakt des Niederschlages im Reime, zu gelten hatten” (emphasis added). The standard English translation by W. Ashton Ellis (London, 1900) renders the phrase in italics “as a lengthened up-​stroke for the down-​beat of the rhyme” (245).

  Rhythm and Meter  T  91 Example 4.1.  Asioli, vol. 3, 26: Rossini, “D’un tenero amore” (Semiramide)

line with the melodic phrase is the norm for Asioli, although he allows for exceptions. Example 4.3 shows a case in which two senari together form a two-​measure phrase. Asioli ascribes this effect—​which seems to change the poet’s senari into senari doppi—​ to the fact that Bellini elides the sdrucciolo ending of line 1 (“riparati”) with the vowel that begins line 2 (“a stanze”). A similar reason cannot be given for example 4.4, from Asioli’s opera Pigmalione, where he groups two senari into a single phrase of four measures. The words, which are not included in Asioli’s example, are “che pace, che calma /​mi scende nell’alma.”18 Example 4.5, from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, shows a typical setting of decasillabi.19 Each line contains three accented syllables, but the line is usually set, as here, to two measures of music. The first and last accents, on syllables 3 and 9, are placed on the downbeats of consecutive measures; the middle accent, on

18 Asioli, vol. 3, 12. The passage may be found on p. 172 of the manuscript score of Pigmalione belonging to Asioli’s colleague Filippo Rolla (https://​ks.imslp.info/​files/​imgl​nks/​usimg/​4/​4b/​IMSL​ P378​575-​PML​P611​187-​Asio​li_​-​_​Pig​mali​one_​II_​(fs_​ms​_​Mil​ano).pdf, accessed 17 July 2018). 19 I reproduce the text of “Non più andrai” as Asioli gives it, with “al giardino” instead of da Ponte’s “girando.”

92  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.2.  Asioli, vol. 3, 22: Bellini, “Nel furor delle tempeste” (Il pirata)

syllable 6, is placed on the second-​most-​accented beat of the first measure. For this reason, decasillabi tend to be set to melodies in  or , where the third quarter note provides an appropriate location for the second accent. The fourth eighth note in  may serve the same function. The correlation between the poetic line and the two-​measure unit is not a fixed rule but, at most, a flexible norm. Three-​measure units are hardly unknown, although they generally occur in pairs. Four-​ measure settings are frequent, especially for ottonari and decasillabi. In florid passages, the length of a line might significantly exceed four measures. Quinario and settenario are the only odd-​numbered meters commonly used in versi lirici during this period. (Endecasillabi lirici became common in the late nineteenth century.) Example 4.6 shows two of Asioli’s illustrations of quinari in musical settings. Because a line of quinario contains only five syllables—​four in a quinario tronco—​short measures tend to be used, especially measures of , , or . In this way, the composer may still place the two accents in each line on the downbeats of consecutive measures. One-​measure settings of quinari are common in slow tempos; Asioli sometimes analyzes two such lines as a single melodic phrase.

Example 4.3.  Asioli, vol. 3, 28: Bellini, “Ah! vieni riparati” (Il pirata)

Example 4.4.  Asioli, vol. 3, 12: Asioli, Pigmalione (1796), aria finale

94  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.5.  Asioli, vol. 3, 20: Mozart, “Non più andrai” (Le nozze di Figaro)

In some of Asioli’s examples, the secondary accent in quinario is placed on a weak beat or disregarded entirely. In example 4.6b, the first line of the couplet “Giorno d’orrore /​ed in contento” is set to two  measures; the secondary accent, on syllable 1, falls naturally on the first downbeat. Line 2, in which no syllable before the accento comune stands out as accented, is set to a single measure; its downbeat supports the accento comune. Because accenti comuni fall on the downbeats of successive measures, Asioli analyzes this three-​measure phrase as 2o–​1o–​1o, weak–​strong–​strong. When a line of settenario contains three accents, its setting may resemble decasillabo in that the three accented syllables are typically spread over two measures. In such cases, the first accent falls on either syllable 1 or syllable 2, as in example 4.7. Composers treated the beginnings of poetic lines with some freedom; even an unstressed first syllable might be placed on a downbeat. This freedom was especially useful where the location of the first accent varies, as happens often in odd-​ numbered meters: regardless of where the first accented syllable falls, a composer could apply the same melodic rhythm to each line of text. In the late eighteenth century, such isorhythm, as it is called today, was especially characteristic of Paisiello,

Example 4.6.  Asioli, vol. 3, 29–​30: Two settings of quinari

a. Asioli, “Amo te solo” from Tre Ariette (published 1818) b. Rossini, “Giorno d’orror” (Semiramide, act 2, Duetto Semiramide–​Arsace)

96  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.7.  Asioli, vol. 3, 25: Rossini, “Serbami ognor” (Semiramide, act 1, Duettino)

but it became widespread in the nineteenth century. The cabaletta “Di quella pira” from Verdi’s Il trovatore is an excellent example of isorhythm: the secondary accent in the title line falls on syllable 2, but Verdi places syllable 1 on the downbeat. The freedom accorded to the first syllable in odd-​numbered meters was often extended to even-​numbered meters, especially ottonario and decasillabo. In these meters, however, the downbeat accorded to the first syllable did not displace any subsequent accents. Instead, the initial downbeat is added to the others, resulting in settings of 3–​4 measures. The passages in example 4.8 appear in Lippmann’s encyclopedic study of Italian text-​setting.20

Four-​Cycles As we learned in c­ hapter 2, Asioli’s ritmo armonico analyzes a rhythmic flow into repeating cycles of isochronous impulses that need not coincide with the beats of the notated measure. (“Isochronous” means that the impulses are equally spaced in time.) Similar ideas have been advanced in recent decades by Christopher 20 Friedrich Lippmann, “Der italienische Vers und der musikalische Rhythmus, II. Teil,” Analecta musicologica 14 (1974): 324–​410; 331 (ex. 210b), 371 (ex. 272c), and 391 (ex. 306b).

  Rhythm and Meter  T  97 Example 4.8.  Phrases of three or more measures in even-​numbered meters

Hasty and Justin London. Hasty’s concept of metric projection offers a richly subjective description of the process that most present-​ day scholars call entrainment, the synchronization of a listener’s internal rhythms to an external stimulus. In the descriptions of Hasty and London, a listener entrains not only to series of impulses but also to cycles of such impulses, especially if those cycles are themselves of equal length. What Asioli describes are what London would call two-​cycles, repeating cycles of two beats. For the music covered in this book, it is especially useful to focus on cycles of four impulses; I call these four-​cycles. The concept of four-​cycle might be defined in either of two ways. The term might be defined so that the strongest impulse always begins the cycle, regardless of where this impulse falls within a musical phrase. I will call this a metric four-​cycle. Alternatively, a four-​cycle might coincide with a musical phrase or subphrase, regardless of whether the cycle begins with a strong or a weak impulse. I will call this a melodic four-​cycle. It is useful to admit both options, but they must be differentiated. Asioli’s use of the numeral 1 to denote the strong impulse suggests a metric conception (first =​strongest), but his analyses reveal a melodic orientation: where melodies are concerned, his analyses more often proceed 2–​1 than 1–​2. In the following discussion, “four-​cycle” will mean “melodic four-​cycle” except where “metric four-​cycle” is specified. The numeral 1 will always denote the strongest impulse in a four-​cycle, which is not necessarily the first impulse in the cycle. For now I leave “strongest” undefined. In a musical score, a four-​cycle may occupy one-​half, one, two, four, eight, or sixteen notated measures. For the repertoire with which we are concerned, the accentual shape of a metric four-​cycle is the same as that of a  measure as described by Asioli and his predecessor Francesco Galeazzi (1758–​1819): beat 1 is strongest; beat 3 is weaker than beat 1 but stronger than beats 2 and 4; beats 2 and 4 are weak.21 Hasty’s description of metrical cycles of any size as “measures” fits the 21 See the discussion of Galeazzi in Rothstein, “Meter and Text-​Setting in Italian Operas.”

98  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera conception advanced here, but I will continue to use “measure” in its everyday sense. “Measure” and “bar” are synonymous.22 In their Generative Theory of Tonal Music, Lerdahl and Jackendoff separate grouping from meter as components of rhythmic structure. In their terms, metric four-​cycles belong to a piece’s metrical structure; melodic four-​cycles belong to its grouping structure. The dichotomy is not so tidy, however, because melodic four-​ cycles can only exist where a robust metrical structure also exists. Melodic four-​ cycles relate melodic groups of a given length to an underlying metrical grid. Schenker seems to have been the first to point to the possibility that different melodic four-​cycles may exist simultaneously in different parts of a musical texture, especially the melody and the bass.23 The idea was later developed by Georgiades, although Georgiades may not have read Schenker’s account.24 Because neither Schenker nor Georgiades distinguished metric from melodic four-​cycles, both regarded the phenomenon as a kind of polymeter, a term that Georgiades employs. In Schenker’s words, “it is as if two metric schemes were operating against one another.” From the perspective of Schenker and Georgiades, the first impulse in a four-​cycle is strongest by default, presumably because it has what Moritz Hauptmann called “the energy of beginning.”25 Although Schenker admits that a four-​cycle may begin with an upbeat (and shows examples of this), he regards the phenomenon as irregular; in his words, it embodies “a certain contradiction to the metric scheme.”26 This equation of melodic and metric four-​cycles has been influential in North America, especially among theorists of the Schenkerian school. In example 4.9, from Don Giovanni, Donna Elvira sings a series of what Asioli would call two-​measure phrases. Because the ritmo armonico proceeds at a half-​ note pace (the half note also represents the distance between accented syllables), each two-​measure phrase comprises four rhythmic impulses. The orchestral bass groups these impulses differently, beginning each of its four-​cycles one measure earlier than Elvira’s. The bass’s four-​cycles correspond to changes of harmony and, later, dynamics. What results is the polymeter described by Schenker and Georgiades but also, under various names, by Charles Burkhart, Carl Schachter, Frank Samarotto, Roger Kamien, and the present author.27 Given the end-​ accented tendency of Italian verse, I now believe that it is better to count the interlocking 22 Hasty uses the term bar to denote the notated measure only. 23 Schenker, Free Composition, 124 and Fig. 147/​4. 24 Georgiades, “Aus der Musiksprache des Mozart-​Theaters.” The circulation of Schenker’s work was banned in Nazi Germany, where Georgiades began his musicological career. 25 Hauptmann, The Nature of Harmony and Metre, 204; quoted in Hasty, Meter as Rhythm, 101. 26 Schenker, Free Composition, 123. 27 Example 4.9 was discussed by Burkhart in a conference paper, “The Dramatic Role of Rhythm in Several Numbers from Don Giovanni,” delivered to the 1987 meeting of the Society for Music Theory (Rochester, New York). Other sources referred to in this paragraph include Carl Schachter, “Aspects of Meter,” in Unfoldings, 79–​117; Frank Samarotto, “Strange Dimensions: Regularity and Irregularity in Deep Levels of Rhythmic Reduction,” in Schenker Studies 2, ed. Carl Schachter and Hedi Siegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 222–​38; Roger Kamien, “Conflicting Metrical Patterns in Accompaniment and Melody in Works by Mozart and Beethoven: A Preliminary Study,” Journal of Music Theory 37 (1993): 311–​48; and William Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, especially 199–​213.

  Rhythm and Meter  T  99 Example 4.9.  Mozart, Don Giovanni, act 1, Aria Elvira, mm. 12–​22

four-​cycles differently: the orchestra’s as 1–​2–​3–​4, Elvira’s as 3–​4–​1–​(2). (Parentheses denote an unsounded impulse.) The 1 of Elvira’s four-​cycles falls on the accenti comuni of her verses; it also coincides with the orchestra’s 1. The coincidence of the main accents in such situations has been persuasively described by Reinhard Strohm.28 28 Reinhard Strohm, “Zur Metrik in Haydn und Anfossis ‘La vera costanza,’” in Joseph Haydn: Bericht über den internationalen Joseph Haydn Kongress (Wien, 1982), ed. Eva Badura-​ Skoda (Munich: Henle, 1986), 279–​94; 293.

100  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera On this view, the conflict within the musical texture is primarily between two grouping structures, not two metrical structures; the term “polymeter” is misleading. I say “primarily between two grouping structures” because Elvira accents some weak impulses quite powerfully, especially those on the words “barbaro” (m. 15) and “scorno” (m. 17). The orchestra does not support these accents; Elvira is on her own, swimming against the tide, as Carl Schachter has put it in another context.29 On what basis can one decide the relative strength of impulses within a four-​ cycle—​or, better, a series of four-​cycles? In order to be reasonably objective about it, one needs a set of metrical preference rules, a concept that was introduced formally by Lerdahl and Jackendoff, though informally by earlier authors.30 David Temperley has offered a slightly different set of metrical preference rules (henceforth MPRs) from that of Lerdahl and Jackendoff.31 The list in table 4.1 is Table 4.1.  Metrical preference rules MPR 1 (Periodicity Rule). Prefer beats at each level to be evenly spaced. MPR 2 (Duple Bias Rule). Prefer duple over triple relationships between levels. MPR 3 (Length Rule). Prefer a structure that aligns strong beats with onsets of longer events: long notes; long harmonies; long slurs; long dynamics; etc. MPR 4 (Harmony Rule). Prefer to align strong beats with changes in harmony. MPR 5 (Stability Rule). Prefer to align strong beats with the onsets of relatively stable harmonies, weaker beats with the onsets of less stable harmonies. MPR 6 (Suspension Rule). Prefer to align strong beats with suspensions, including cadential 64 chords; prefer to align weak beats with the resolutions of these dissonances. MPR 7 (Stress Rule). Prefer to align strong beats with onsets of louder events. MPR 8 (Linguistic Stress Rule). Prefer to align strong beats with stressed syllables of text. MPR 9 (End-​Accent Rule). Prefer a metrical structure in which the beat that carries the accento comune is the strongest beat in the musical setting of a poetic line. MPR 10 (Parallelism Rule). Prefer to assign parallel metrical structures to parallel segments. MPR 11 (Pattern-​Repetition Rule). Where a pattern is immediately repeated, prefer to place the stronger beat in the first instance of the pattern rather than the second. 29 Schachter, Unfoldings, 229. 30 Informal MPRs may be found in Eugen Teztel, “Der Grosse Takt,” Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 3 (1920–​1921): 605–​15; Donald F. Tovey, A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas (London, 1931); and Andrew Imbrie, “‘Extra’ Measures and Metrical Ambiguity in Beethoven,” in Beethoven Studies, ed. Alan Tyson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 45–​66. 31 David Temperley, The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 357–​58.

  Rhythm and Meter  T  101 my own, but it is based on the MPRs of Lerdahl/​Jackendoff and Temperley, modified slightly to suit Italian vocal music of the nineteenth and late eighteenth centuries. The main difference between this list of MPRs and earlier ones lies in my MPR 9, the End-​ Accent Rule, which replaces Lerdahl and Jackendoff ’s “strong beat early” rule. Because the numbering of rules is essentially arbitrary, I refer to preference rules by name rather than number in the following discussion. Passages like example 4.9 may be found in the operas of Paisiello, as I have shown elsewhere,32 but Paisiello does not highlight the opposition between voice and accompaniment as dramatically as Mozart does. Some later Italian composers do follow Mozart in this regard, Rossini and Verdi in particular.33 The next section of this chapter will be devoted to Rossini, but it is appropriate to offer one example from his music here. Example 4.10 shows the beginning of a cabaletta from Semiramide. The orchestra’s four-​ c ycles are beginning-​ accented, following the Harmony Rule: changes of root occur only in odd-​numbered measures, and there is no such change between m. 1 and m. 5. The Stability Rule is also involved: the passing D♮ in the bass of m. 10 suggests that this is a weak measure; changes from a local dominant to its tonic fall on the downbeats of mm. 9, 13, and 17. At mm. 5 and 9, the End-​Accent Rule is reinforced by the Length Rule, because each of these accenti comuni is preceded by one or more measures of shorter values (eighth notes). The melodic four-​c ycles may be counted metrically as 2–​3–​4–​1, exactly as Manuel García counted four-​cycles in ­example 2.22, a similar passage from the same opera.34 The strongest impulse comes at the end of the melodic four-​c ycle. These strong impulses, which mark the ends of poetic lines, coincide with the beginnings of four-​c ycles in the orchestra. The orchestra’s four-​c ycles are metric rather than melodic: although each orchestral cycle ends with 4, this final measure is not a point of arrival; the orchestra’s 4 is simply the last measure before a change of harmony. Four-​c ycles of this type tend toward self-​replication: they go on and on, often until the final tonic of a movement is reached. In fast tempos—​especially in Rossini—​they often create a visceral sense of excitement. A different type of conflict is illustrated in example 4.11. This is the serenade that Count Almaviva sings to Rosina in Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. Strohm has reduced the general situation represented by example 4.11 to a diagram, shown in

32 Rothstein, “Meter and Text Setting in Mozart’s Italian Operas.” 33 For Verdi see my “Metrical Theory and Verdi’s Midcentury Operas,” Dutch Journal of Music Theory 16 (2011): 93–​111. 34 Rossini’s song “La danza,” from Soirées musicales, is another example of competing four-​cycles. The piano’s left hand is organized in metrical four-​cycles, 1–​2–​3–​4, while the right-​hand melody and the vocal line are organized in melodic four-​cycles that are end-​accented, 2–​3–​4–​1.

102  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.10.  Rossini, Semiramide, act 2, Duetto Semiramide–​Arsace, mm. 246–​ 62 numbered 1–17

Example 4.11.  Paisiello, Il barbiere di Siviglia, act 1, Cavatina Conte, mm. 1–​12

104  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.12.  Strohm’s diagram of “period beginning”

example 4.12. He calls this Periodenbeginn, the beginning of a period from which grouping conflicts are absent.35 The vocal line accents the downbeat of the second measure in each two-​measure unit through the placement of the accento comune. The accompaniment accents the downbeat of the first measure by establishing a new harmony there. Both accents, vocal and instrumental, are salient, but they do not coincide. Example 4.11 largely reflects the situation outlined in Strohm’s diagram, but there are additional factors at work. Almaviva’s text consists of a series of quinari. Within each of his two-​measure phrases, the accento comune accents the downbeat of the second measure, following the End-​Accent Rule. The Length Rule is also involved: in the vocal line, downbeats of even-​numbered measures contain a quarter note that follows shorter notes; until m. 9, chords in even-​ numbered measures generally last longer than chords in odd-​ numbered measures. But the orchestral bass accents the downbeats of odd-​ numbered measures: two-​measure-​long bass notes begin in mm. 1, 5, and 7. There are also pitch-​height accents in the melody on the downbeats of mm. 5, 7, and 9, forming the ascending line D–​E♭–​F. In short, alternating downbeats receive accents of alternating kinds. The overall effect is one of accentual equilibrium. Equilibrium can be a difficult state to maintain. If one wishes to convert Paisiello’s  measures into  measures following Asioli’s principles, accenti comuni would need to fall on the first beats of those measures; but that would syncopate all of the two-​measure-​long bass notes. Example 4.13 offers a compromise that Asioli never contemplated: melody and accompaniment are barred separately. This looks very much like polymeter. A listener might treat either series of accents—​those on odd-​numbered or even-​numbered downbeats—​as referential, entraining to its repetition and treating the other series of accents as syncopated. In other words, each cycle of four quarter-​ note impulses might be felt as either 1–​2–​3–​4 or 3–​4 –​1 –​2. The passage can be felt in either way, but it is unlikely that a single listener will feel it in both ways simultaneously. The term “polymeter” may not describe the experience

35 Strohm’s concept of period-​ending does not concern us here.

  Rhythm and Meter  T  105 Example 4.13.  Re-​notation of e­ xample 4.11

of an individual listener, but it may describe the experience of an entire audience. Other instances of accentual equilibrium include the arias “Voi che sapete” from Le nozze di Figaro and “Vedrai carino” from Don Giovanni. The opening (at least) of the duettino “Là ci darem la mano” belongs in the same category. Accentual equilibrium is most clearly rendered in notation by using short measures: the respective signatures of these examples are , , and .36 Accentual equilibrium is less common in nineteenth-​century Italian opera; where it does occur, it tends to be limited to isolated passages. The opening of the aria “Ah! non credea mirarti” from Bellini’s La sonnambula is a good example. This aria is the subject of a detailed analysis by Baragwanath.37 Although his analysis, like mine, uses Asioli’s writings as a point of departure, we come to different conclusions. Example 4.14 juxtaposes the two analyses, first his (4.14a), then mine (4.14b). Amina’s words (the libretto is by Felice Romani) are organized into two quatrains of settenari. Here is the first quatrain: Ah! non credea mirarti si presto estinto, o fiore. Passasti al par d’amore, che un giorno sol durò.

36 See the analyses of “Vedrai carino” and “Là ci darem la mano” in Rothstein, “Meter and Text-​Setting in Mozart’s Italian Operas.” 37 Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions, 301–​9.

106  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Three settenari piani are followed by a settenario tronco. Elisions reduce the number of apparent syllables: presto elides with estinto, passasti with al, and che with un. Baragwanath’s reduction shows that Bellini effectively divides the final settenario tronco into a quinario piano (“che un giorno solo,” mm. 10–​11 and 13–​14) plus a quinario tronco (“ah sol durò,” mm. 14–​15), with a complete statement of the settenario tronco in between (mm. 12–​13). Baragwanath places accent signs on notes that carry accenti comuni—​not only the natural accenti of the poet’s settenari but also the artificial accenti of Bellini’s quinari. The frequency of accenti comuni doubles during the eleven-​measure period, from one every two measures (mm. 5–​10) to one every measure (mm. 13–​15). Following Asioli’s principles, Baragwanath places each accento comune on a strong impulse (1) of his ritmo armonico, which consequently doubles its pace, from whole notes in mm. 5–​9 to half notes in mm. 10 and 13–​14. Although Baragwanath points out Example 4.14.  Two analyses of Bellini, “Ah! non credea mirarti” (La sonnambula), mm. 1–​15

  Rhythm and Meter  T  107 Example 4.14.  Continued

a. Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions and Puccini (excerpt, mm. 5–​15)* b. Analysis by the present author * from Nicholas Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions and Puccini, p. 306 (­example 6.15b). © 2011 by Nicholas Baragwanath. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of Indiana University Press.

108  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera certain melodic accents, the text is the primary determinant of his ritmo armonico. I believe that Asioli would have counted the ritmo armonico of this piece in half-​ measure units throughout, following the rhythm that prevails in the orchestral basses everywhere except mm. 3–​4 (see 4.14b); recall that ritmo armonico means “accompanimental rhythm,” not “harmonic rhythm.” Each  measure would contain a 1 on beat 1 and a 2 on beat 3. Asioli would have regarded Baragwanath’s whole-​measure ritmo armonico in mm. 5–​9 as impossibly slow (review his commentary on ­example 2.9). My analysis, less text-​dependent than Baragwanath’s, consequently uses the half-​measure as its unit of rhythmic impulse, although a conductor might beat quarter notes or subdivided halves. As usual, I extend Asioli’s two-​cycles to four-​cycles. The accompaniment, played by strings, contains three layers: triplet arpeggios in the violins (not shown); a pizzicato bass, marking most of the half-​note pulses; and long notes in the violas from m. 7 onward. The orchestral prelude begins (mm. 1–​2) with a standard cadential progression—​ in Italian terms, a cadenza composta—​lacking an initial tonic (which would have made it a cadenza lunga) and separated by a fermata from its final tonic.38 The characteristic metrical setting of this cadential progression is 2–​3–​4, leading to a root-​position tonic on the following 1. Had an initial tonic been present, it too would have fallen on the 1 of a metrical four-​cycle.39 The downbeat of m. 3 is thus established as a strong impulse. The Pattern-​Repetition Rule suggests that the downbeat of m. 4 is weaker than that of m. 3, so mm. 3–​4 together constitute a metrical four-​cycle. The vocal entry in m. 5 thus falls on a new 1. Accentual conflict begins with mm. 5–​6. Although the accompaniment favors m. 5 over m. 6 (Pattern-​Repetition Rule), the first accento comune falls on the downbeat of m. 6 (End-​Accent Rule). This accented syllable is further emphasized by length in the form of a melisma, which I have reduced to a long note, marked with an accent. The conflicting accents in accompaniment and melody create accentual equilibrium at the beginning of the vocal period. This equilibrium is soon challenged. In mm. 7–​8, the Length and End-​Accent Rules favor the downbeat of m. 8 in the melody. The placement of the neighboring 64 chord in m. 7 also favors m. 8 (Stability Rule), but the entrance of the violas favors m. 7. The situation of mm. 9–​10 resembles that of mm. 5–​6, but the Pattern-​Repetition Rule applies more strongly here because a one-​ measure idea is repeated in both melody and

38 On the cadenza composta see Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style. On the cadenza lunga see Giorgio Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento, and Vasili Byros, “Hauptruhepuncte des Geistes: Punctuation Schemas and the Late-​Eighteenth-​Century Sonata,” in What Is a Cadence? Theoretical and Analytical Perspectives on Cadences in the Classical Repertoire, ed. Markus Neuwirth and Pieter Bergé (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 215–​51. 39 The metrical settings of this and other eighteenth-​century schemas are discussed in Rothstein, “Meter and Text-​Setting in Mozart’s Italian Operas.”

  Rhythm and Meter  T  109 accompaniment; m. 9 therefore has the edge.40 But Bellini treats the downbeats of mm. 9, 10, and 11 similarly in the melody: each measure features a descending step from beat 1 to beat 3, using the same rhythm of declamation as the piano endings in mm. 6 and 8; the descending steps are respectively B–​A, B–​A, and E–​ D.41 It is as though each downbeat in mm. 8–​11 were the accento comune of its own verso piano (see the brackets above the melody). When m. 11 fails to pair with m. 12 as m. 9 paired with m. 10, a reduction from two measures to one is accomplished in the ritmo melodico; Asioli would have called mm. 10–​11 a one-​ measure phrase surrounded by two-​measure phrases. Baragwanath’s analysis captures this aspect of the rhythm. Measure 11 proves to be the turning point in the rhythmic story of the period; accentual conflict diminishes after this point. Unlike the voice, the accompaniment never abandons its organization in four-​ cycles. The entry of the violas at m. 7 suggests a strong measure despite the unstable 6 harmony. Long slurs for the violas mark the downbeats of odd-​ numbered 4 measures from m. 7 until m. 13. The change of bass register in m. 11, and the slurred passing motion that follows in basses and violas, help to make the downbeat of m. 11 seem stronger than the downbeat of m. 12. Voice and strings arrive together on the downbeat of m. 13, their accents now coinciding. The downbeat of m. 13 begins a version of the same cadential progression that was heard in mm. 1–​3, this time including an initial tonic. The cadenza lunga in mm. 13–​15 carries its usual metrical implication of 1–​2–​3–​4–​1. The eleven-​measure vocal period begins in a state of tenuous accentual equilibrium. After a reduction from groups of four impulses in the vocal line to groups of two impulses (this is clearest in m. 11), a group of three impulses follows in mm. 12–​13, aided by the tronco ending on the word “durò.” This asymmetry permits the transition from accentual equilibrium at the period’s beginning to end-​accentuation as the period nears its conclusion. The final four-​ cycle, from the second half of m. 13 through the downbeat of m. 15, may be counted 2–​3–​4–​1. End-​accented four-​cycles are the norm in the music of Paisiello, the composer who most clearly foreshadows the treatment of rhythm by Rossini and Bellini. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Paisiello sometimes maintains four-​cycles—​ each two or four notated measures in length—​in an unbroken succession for hundreds of measures at a time. The effect of such regularity can be hypnotic. Almost always, Paisiello’s melodic four-​cycles are end-​accented, in the pattern 2–​3–​4–​1. Example 4.15, from Nina, illustrates. The division of the music into four-​ measure phrases is obvious. That strong impulses fall on the last measure of each

40 Some readers will notice the similarity between mm. 9–​10 of Bellini’s aria and mm. 10–​13 of Mozart’s Symphony in G Minor, K. 550. See the discussion of the Mozart passage in Lerdahl and Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, 22–​25. 41 Because of the motivic repetition in mm. 9–​11, I do not reduce the E–​D of m. 11 to D–​D as Baragwanath does.

110  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.15.  Paisiello, Nina, Quartet, mm. 4–​24

  Rhythm and Meter  T  111 phrase—​mm. 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24—​becomes gradually clear based on features of the accompaniment, including the passing A♭s in mm. 5 and 13 (both metrically weak) and the arrivals of the root-​position tonic at mm. 8, 16, 20, and 24.42

Rossini Among nineteenth-​century Italian composers, Rossini and Verdi exhibit the greatest virtuosity in their treatment of rhythm. They thrust rhythmic and metric effects into the foreground in a way rarely equaled by their contemporaries. This is especially true where meter at relatively large levels—​two, four, or eight measures—​ is concerned. Bianconi’s analysis of the slow movement from the first-​act finale in Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri is exemplary in many respects. Because his analysis has not been translated and is not discussed by Baragwanath, it is worth considering in some detail. It is explicitly based on Asioli’s distinction between ritmo melodico and ritmo armonico. The main liberty that Bianconi takes with Asioli’s concepts is the same one that Baragwanath takes: he allows the ritmo armonico to proceed at a much slower pace than Asioli would have countenanced. Bianconi seems, in fact, to interpret ritmo armonico literally as “harmonic rhythm.” Although Asioli might not have endorsed Bianconi’s analysis, it is insightful in its own terms. The slow movement comprises mm. 233–​358 of Rossini’s finale. Example 4.16 reproduces Bianconi’s diagram of mm. 233–​310, which uses rehearsal numbers from the Ricordi vocal score instead of measure numbers.43 Slurs indicate units of melodic grouping—​phrases and subphrases. These units correspond to Asioli’s ritmo melodico. Square brackets indicate metrical cycles, corresponding roughly to Asioli’s ritmo armonico. With one exception, each metrical cycle consists of four rhythmic impulses, which are spaced either one, two, or four measures apart. The letters f (forte, “strong”) and d (debole, “weak”) are equivalent respectively to Asioli’s 1o and 2o. In the first system of the diagram, the two rhythms coincide; note the punctuation marks that separate the square brackets and the longer slurs. As Bianconi points out, this passage, mm. 233–​68, is a minuet in Mozartean style. An eighteen-​measure period, comprising antecedent and consequent halves, is played by the orchestra and then sung as a trio with orchestral accompaniment. Each half of the period is structured as a sentence, fundamentally 2 +​2 +​4 measures. Example 4.17 shows the statement with voices; I have translated Bianconi’s symbols f and d into S (strong) and W (weak) respectively. Measures are numbered 1–​18. The final four-​measure phrase is expanded to six measures by a repetition of the final cadence, using the pattern that Janet Schmalfeldt has termed the “ ‘one more 42 The bass arrival in m. 16 is delayed by a quarter rest. 43 Bianconi, 133.

112  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.16.  Bianconi’s diagram of Rossini, L’italiana in Algeri, act 1, Finale, mm. 233–​310*

* from Gioachino Rossini, 1792–​1992: il testo e la scena, edited by Paolo Fabbri. Copyright ©1994 by Fondazione Rossini Pesaro. Used by permission. time’ technique.”44 Bianconi’s diagram uses the Arabic numerals 1–​4 to denote the individual measures in Rossini’s four-​measure phrases; the repetition of 3–​4 in the final phrase reflects the repetition of that phrase’s second half. The text comprises a tercet of quinari doppi, with sdrucciolo endings in the middle of each doubled line and a tronco ending only at the close: Pria di dividerci /​da voi, signore, veniamo a esprimervi /​il nostro core, che sempre memore /​di voi sarà.

Bianconi identifies weak and strong measures exactly as Asioli would have done, following the musical placement of the accenti comuni; endings of individual quinari fall in each even-​numbered measure. A hierarchy of endings

44 Janet Schmalfeldt, “Cadential Processes: The Evaded Cadence and the ‘One More Time’ Technique,” Journal of Musicological Research 12 (1992): 1–​52.

  Rhythm and Meter  T  113 Example 4.17.  L’italiana in Algeri, act 1, Finale, mm. 251–​68 numbered 1–​18

is created by the poet’s systematic deployment of ending-​types: sdrucciolo, the weakest ending, appears everywhere except mm. 4 and 8 (piano) and mm. 16 and 18 (tronco, repeated “one more time”). That even-​numbered measures are strong is suggested not only by the End-​Accent Rule but also by the Length Rule. The Harmony Rule, however, is violated in mm. 9–​12, where harmonies begin on odd-​numbered measures. In the orchestral statement of this period (not shown), the Harmony Rule is also violated at the beginning: the opening G-​major harmony occupies the first four measures. The rule suggests that these measures be heard as beginning-​accented.

114  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.18.  The same, mm. 268–​76

Rather than being end-​accented, as Bianconi and Asioli would have it, I suggest that the minuet represents what I have termed accentual equilibrium: accents on odd-​and even-​numbered measures alternate in a systematic and predictable way. In this case, however, accents on odd-​numbered measures are less salient than those on even-​numbered measures; equilibrium is less perfect here than in Paisiello’s “Saper bramate” (example 4.11). An effect of the “one more time” repetition in mm. 15–​18 is to place two strong accents—​tronco endings, set to the minuet’s longest note values—​two measures apart. Regardless of whether one has heard the minuet as beginning-​accented, end-​accented, or in accentual equilibrium, the accents at mm. 16 and 18 prepare the shift that Bianconi identifies at m. 18 of the example (m. 268 in the score), a shift to four-​cycles that are unequivocally beginning-​accented. The musical texture also changes at this point, from vocal melody with accompaniment to the texture that would later be called parlante (“spoken”), meaning that the orchestra carries the principal melodic line (the violins’ syncopated melody soon turns into accompaniment). This passage of transition, as Bianconi regards it, is represented by the middle system in example 4.16. The beginning of the passage is shown in example 4.18. A consistent harmonic rhythm, in the modern sense of that term, is established here: harmonies change every two measures, alternating stable and unstable harmonies. Bianconi’s deployment of f and d (again translated into S and W) responds to the new pattern by showing a new, slower level of ritmo armonico, with rhythmic impulses two measures apart. In accord with the Stability Rule, he labels stable harmonies as strong, unstable ones as weak. Accenti comuni fall every four measures, coinciding with the beginnings of orchestral four-​cycles. Bianconi shows this coincidence by analyzing each phrase as having five measures rather

  Rhythm and Meter  T  115 than four, with measure 5 of one phrase becoming measure 1 of the next. The scheme of overlapping five-​measure phrases reflects not the vocal phrases, which hardly exist here, but the harmonic motion from stability to instability and back again. Harmonically, the section modulates from G major to E♭ major, ending on V of E♭ in preparation for the movement’s third and final section. The third section, the beginning of which is shown in example 4.19, slows the harmonic rhythm still further, to a rate of one harmony every four measures. Bianconi now shows strong and weak impulses four measures apart, resulting in a metric cycle eight measures long. Even his faster level of ritmo armonico (example 4.16) places rhythmic impulses two measures apart, although the music’s surface rhythms are actually faster than before (sixteenth notes appear in some of the vocal lines). A major point of Bianconi’s analysis is that this lengthy movement, during which neither the tempo nor the meter signature changes, constitutes a large rallentando based on changes in harmonic rhythm. The truly slow part of this slow movement, from his perspective, is achieved only in the third section, where dramatic time stops and the characters express nothing but perplexity (the words “confusi e stupidi” require no translation). About this progression from normal human time to dramatic stasis, Bianconi is surely correct. The other major point of Bianconi’s analysis lies in the contrast between closed brackets in the first system of example 4.16 and open-​ended brackets (with forward-​pointing arrows) in the second and third systems. This contrast represents the change from end-​stopped four-​cycles, which include their harmonic and melodic points of closure, to open-​ended four-​cycles, which do not. Georgiades identified the same contrast over forty years earlier, using the somewhat unfortunate terms Liedbau (“song construction”) and Gerüstbau (“scaffold construction”). Georgiades’s student Manfred Hermann Schmid employed the simpler terms “closed” and “open” construction to mean the same thing. Before Georgiades, Donald Francis Tovey spoke of open construction in terms of “metrical periods,” usually four or eight measures in length, that “close into” the following period.45 Bianconi’s terms for the same dichotomy are “grammatical period” (periodo grammaticale) for the closed type of construction and “physical period” (periodo fisico) for the open type. He describes the difference eloquently: “The grammatical period speaks; the physical period happens . . . like an event of nature.”46 The physical period is “mathematical,” not human. In Rossini’s operas, grammatical periods are used for “full-​fledged melodies” (le grandi melodie), physical periods for “passages of stupefaction” (quadri di stupore). Significantly, he identifies a tendency for Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven to use “physical periods” in codas, 45 Tovey, A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas. 46 Here is the complete passage: “Il periodo grammaticale, flessibile, è plasmato dall’impronta individuale di chi lo pronuncia e ne definisce passo per passo il senso, il ritmo, la piega, le giunture, la durata; la periodo fisico risponde a leggi matematiche: date certe condizioni, si sviluppa in maniera prevedibile, come un evento di natura, ed il suo decorso è rigido, anelastico. Il periodo grammaticale parla; il periodo fisico accade. L’une è l’atto compiuto da un soggetto consapevole; l’altro è un fenomeno che oggettivamente si verifica.” Bianconi, 139.

116  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.19.  The same, mm. 292–300

  Rhythm and Meter  T  117 closing sections, and other post-​ cadential passages.47 The quintessentially “physical” periods in Rossini’s music are his crescendi, which appear, among other places, as the closing section in the expositions and recapitulations of his overtures. At the opposite end of the spectrum from Rossini’s “physical periods” stand passages such as example 4.20a, from Semiramide.48 What is remarkable is the closed-​off quality of each four-​measure phrase. Dramatically, this slow movement is an extended moment of inwardness: Semiramide and Arsace sing not to each other but to themselves, each expressing mixed emotions at their discovery that Arsace, Semiramide’s intended husband, is actually her long-​ lost son. Isorhythmic, four-​measure phrases are separated by rests. The poetic meter is quinario, but Rossini treats it like quinario doppio. The accento comune of the doubled line falls on the downbeat of each phrase’s third measure, where a harmonic cadence also occurs (the fourth measure echoes the third). Each phrase begins on the downbeat of its first measure, regardless of whether the line’s first syllable is accented or not. In each phrase, the downbeat of the second measure contains a musical accent of some kind: a high note, an appoggiatura, or a cadential 64 (m. 165). In each case, a dynamic accent reinforces the melodic-​ syntactic accent. Nevertheless, it is hard not to conclude, contrary to Asioli, that the first and third measures of each phrase are metrically strong, that melodic and metric four-​cycles are congruent. The four-​measure phrases act also as hypermeasures, in a manner familiar from nineteenth-​century German music.49 Each four-​measure phrase is analogous to a measure of , with the “measures” (i.e., hypermeasures) unusually separated from each other.50 Beat 1 of each phrase’s second measure is an accented weak beat within the hypermeasure—​ much as, within the fourth measure of each phrase, beat 2 is an accented weak beat within the  measure. The relation between phrase and hypermeter reverses itself toward the end of the movement, as it often does in the music of Mozart and Beethoven.51 In example 4.20b, weight has shifted to the second measure in each quinario line. Strong and weak measures are now defined primarily by changes of harmony. The voices’ two-​measure statements begin on a weak measure, where the previous harmony usually continues, and they end on a strong measure, where a new harmony usually begins. I supply only a two-​measure ritmo armonico for this passage, in Asioli’s manner. An even more remarkable case is the slow movement of Malcom’s aria from act 2 of Rossini’s La donna del lago (1819). Later, in c­ hapter 7, we will speak of this aria

47 Bianconi, 143. 48 Asioli’s analysis of the first three measures may be found in example 4.6b. 49 Edward T. Cone complains of this Vierhebigkeit (as he calls it) in Musical Form and Musical Performance. 50 Compare the  measures in Chopin’s Prelude in C Minor, discussed in my Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, 31. 51 See Temperley’s discussion of the “closing-​theme schema” in “End-​Accented Phrases,” 132–​45.

118  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.20.  Rossini, Semiramide, act 2, Duetto Semiramide–​Arsace

  Rhythm and Meter  T  119 Example 4.20.  Continued

a. Measures 152–​69 b. Measures 197–​204 from a harmonic point of view. Its most notable quality, however, is its flexibility of rhythm. The entire movement is given in example 4.21. Malcom is one of Rossini’s “pants roles,” a male character whose part is sung by a female contralto. The opera, based on Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake, is set in sixteenth-​century Scotland, where a civil war is raging. Malcom, a highland chief opposed to the king, fears that his beloved Elena may have been killed, and if she is dead he wishes death for himself. At this point, he knows only that he cannot find her. The movement is notated in , but its effective meter is . Quadruple meter is suggested not only by the slow tempo but also by the harmonic rhythm, which often moves in eighth notes, and by the consecutively accented eighth notes that Malcom sings in mm. 15–​16. The quadruple measure is initially compound rather

120  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.21.  Rossini, La donna del lago, Aria Malcom, first movement

  Rhythm and Meter  T  121 Example 4.21.  Continued

122  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.21.  Continued

  Rhythm and Meter  T  123 Example 4.21.  Continued

124  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.21.  Continued

  Rhythm and Meter  T  125 Example 4.21.  Continued

than simple; that is, beats 1 and 3 are roughly equal in weight. After a freely sung, unaccompanied vocal entrance, the orchestra begins to restate the music of the aria’s prelude with the voice singing over it. Sometimes the vocal line doubles the orchestral melody; Basevi would call such a texture parlante melodico. The poetic meter is ottonario; syllables 3 and 7 are accented. Accented syllables fall sometimes on beat 1 of the  measure, sometimes on beat 3. The alternation of tonic and dominant harmonies in measures 17–​19 can be heard as starting on a downbeat, contrary to the metrical notation, or it can be heard as end-​accented, as it is notated. The placement of accented syllables on beat 3 of mm. 18 and 19 suggests the former interpretation: the orchestral motive is

126  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera beginning-​accented, and the notated beat 3 is the effective downbeat. The following orchestral motive, F–​G–​A–​E in eighth notes, suggests the key of D minor; it too can be heard as either beginning-​or end-​accented. The motive’s repetition is extended to end on an F-​major cadence that clearly falls on a downbeat (m. 22). The cadence itself is a cadenza lunga, with the conventional bass line 3̂–4̂–5̂–5̂–1̂ (A–​B♭–​C–​C–​F). A major, III♯, substitutes for I6.52 The fact that such a cadence is normally placed, metrically, as 1–​2–​3–​4–​1 helps to confirm beat 1 of m. 22 as a real downbeat, not merely a notated downbeat. After the cadence, harmonies change once per measure, so the location of the downbeat remains clear; the meter remains quadruple. Beginning at m. 34 we hear the music of mm. 17–​21, shifted notationally so that it begins on a downbeat. The notated downbeat is now the real downbeat, at least initially, because we have just experienced a passage of metrical clarity in which notated and real downbeats align. The repetition of mm. 17–​21 leads the cadence in m. 38 to fall on beat 3, although this might be heard as a downbeat owing to the cadenza lunga schema. Rossini restores the connection between notated and effective measures by cadencing deceptively on beat 3 of m. 42 and by placing a cadential 64, with vocal cadenza, on beat 1 of m. 43. Measure 46, the last measure of the movement, thus comes to match m. 13, the last measure of the prelude, in both notation and effect. For much of the movement, however, the listener’s struggle to find the downbeat mirrors Malcolm’s struggle to find Elena.

Verdi Verdi’s music, like Rossini’s, exhibits something of Mozart’s rhythmic finesse. Both composers studied Mozart’s music in their student years—​Rossini in Bologna under Stanislao Mattei, Verdi in Milan under Vincenzo Lavigna. Verdi’s study of Mozart centered on Don Giovanni, an opera that is especially complex rhythmically. Verdi also studied the writings of Asioli.53 Until his late operas, Verdi adhered closely to Asioli’s rules of text-​setting, which privilege the Linguistic Stress and End-​Accent Rules. Verdi clearly absorbed Asioli’s preference for ending melodic phrases on strong beats and strong measures. He began to explore other styles of text-​setting once he began to compose to French libretti, as he did in Les vêpres siciliennes (1854–​1855) and Don Carlos (1866–​1867).54 His experience with French eventually led him to a freer approach to setting Italian; the story is deftly told in Andreas Giger’s Verdi and the French Aesthetic. Here we will focus on operas composed between 1847 and 1853. 52 Substituting different chords over the same scale degree in the bass is a hallmark of partimento practice. On the substitution of III or III♯ for I6 in a cadential progression see Schenker, Free Composition, Figs. 14–​18. William Caplin discusses other substitutions for I6 in “The ‘Expanded Cadential Progression’: A Category for the Analysis of Classical Form,” Journal of Musicological Research 7 (1987): 215–​57. 53 On Verdi’s training see Marvin, Verdi the Student—​Verdi the Teacher. 54 Verdi’s French opera Jérusalem (1847) is a revision of I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843).

  Rhythm and Meter  T  127 Example 4.22.  Verdi, Il trovatore, Coro di Zingari: Measures 1–​10 re-​notated

The opening of the Anvil Chorus from Il trovatore (see e­ xample 1.2) is an excellent example of Verdi’s adherence to the End-​Accent Rule. It is probably not obvious to a first-​time listener that the piece begins on a notated upbeat, because the trilled E receives greater emphasis than the following B, a mere eighth note. The melodic pattern changes on beat 4 of m. 1 and again on beat 4 of m. 2. Listeners accustomed to the typically close correlation between pattern-​ changes and downbeats in German Romantic music will probably hear each of these beats as the downbeat of a  measure in a vigorous march tempo. Example 4.22 illustrates this “German” hearing. Verdi’s notation places all phrase-​endings on downbeats, and it aligns with the implied change from i to V in m. 2. But the resolution from this V to i is ambiguous: where one hears the change of harmony probably depends on where one hears the downbeat.55 The “German” hearing is forced to accept a single  measure (m. 8), but this is the only serious disruption until mm. 12–​13, where notated and heard downbeats align unmistakably. An excerpt from Rigoletto (example 4.23) also illustrates how the Linguistic Stress and End-​Accent Rules tend to govern the metrical structure in Verdi’s music at midcentury. The poetic meter is ottonario.56 Accented syllables fall on notated downbeats, with accenti comuni falling on the downbeats of mm. 7 and 9. The effective musical meter is alla breve, as indicated by Verdi’s metronome marking of 96 to the half note; the ritmo armonico also proceeds in half notes. Phrases and subphrases begin in mid-​measure, where changes of dynamic also occur.57 Even the opening tonic appears on an upbeat, despite the fortissimo dynamic. Listeners accustomed to German and Russian music will probably hear this tonic as a 55 In example 4.22, the last sixteenth note in each group of four functions as a lower neighbor. 56 In example 4.23, the first line appears to contain only seven syllables because the Duke’s interjection “Ebben?” is not shown. 57 For Lerdahl and Jackendoff, a change of dynamic preferably indicates a strong beat; this is their MPR 5b (Lerdahl and Jackendoff, 81–​82 and 84).

128  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.23.  Verdi, Rigoletto, act 2, Aria Duca: Beginning of the tempo di mezzo

downbeat, especially once the repeated-​note pattern is itself repeated in the first half of m. 2 (Pattern-​Repetition Rule). There is little doubt, however, that Verdi intended the metrical structure to be heard as he notated it. As we shall see, his melodies tend to begin on weak impulses of the ritmo armonico.

  Rhythm and Meter  T  129 The End-​Accent Rule suggests that the strongest beats in the vocal portion of example 4.23 are the downbeats of mm. 7 and 9. If this is correct, the downbeats of mm. 3 and 5 are similarly strong (Parallelism Rule). The Periodicity Rule then locates an additional strong impulse on the downbeat of m. 1: the initial half-​rest represents the unsounded 1 of a metrical four-​cycle. The melodic four-​cycles function metrically, in the usual Italian manner, as 2–​3–​4–​1. In this part of his career, Verdi sometimes begins a piece with a rest lasting either one-​half or three-​ quarters of a measure, although to notate such a rest at the beginning may seem superfluous. In most cases the opening rest is revealed, in retrospect, as a silent downbeat. Such is the case at several points in La battaglia di Legnano (example 4.24). The overture begins with the opera’s idée fixe, the March of the Lombard League (4.24a). The march, which is notated in , returns later in alla breve (4.24b) but with its actual speed almost unchanged; the respective metronome markings are quarter =​120 and half =​126. The following chorus is set to the same music (4.24c), again in  but in note values half those of 4.24a; the tempo is a little slower (quarter =​108). In each of these passages, the march begins with three notated beats of rest. This is most striking in 4.24b, where the rest occupies one and a half notated measures (vuota means “empty”). The ritmo armonico is twice as slow as the notated beat—​ half notes in 4.24a and c, whole notes in 4.24b; this is clear from the lack of articulation for beats 2 and 4 in the  passages. The opening rests thus represent one and a half impulses of the ritmo armonico, regardless of the meter signature. The poetic meter in example 4.24c is again ottonario, as in example 4.23. Accented syllables fall on each downbeat, accenti comuni on every second downbeat. Each accento comune is set to the longest note in the phrase, so the Length Rule reinforces the End-​Accent Rule. A four-​impulse (two-​measure) level of meter is evident in 4.24c, not only because words are present but because the preceding orchestral music provides a metrical context: mm. 56–​57 form a metrical four-​cycle, 1–​2–​3–​4, leading to a silent 1 on the first downbeat of the grandioso (Periodicity and Duple-​Bias Rules). The next 1 falls on “pat-​to,” the first accento comune. Yet the Harmony Rule, usually so crucial in determining meter, points in the opposite direction: mm. 59–​60 have the tonic A♭ in the bass; the next two measures have the dominant, E♭. In a different context the bass might be decisive, pointing either to beginning-​accented phrases or to accentual equilibrium. That does not seem to be the case here. A confluence of other factors, including Verdi’s stylistic habits at this time, suggest that the melodic four-​cycles are metrically 3–​4–​1–​2 rather than 1–​2–​3–​4. Act 2 opens with a chorus whose main section is written in , Allegro vivacissimo. The section begins with nearly a full measure of rest (example 4.25a). Once again the silent downbeat proves to be a hyperdownbeat, the 1 of a metrical four-​cycle. This is confirmed by the appearance of the same music as accompaniment during the scena of the following duet (example 4.25b), where the meter signature is . The original choral phrase, now played by solo strings, begins in the second half of m. 36, the downbeat of which is marked by a long note in the horn. Verdi’s metronome marking is identical for both passages, half note =​84.

130  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.24.  Verdi, La battaglia di Legnano

  Rhythm and Meter  T  131 Example 4.24.  Continued

a. Sinfonia, mm. 1–​5 b. Sinfonia, mm. 108–​19 c. Introduzione, mm. 54–​62 Verdi often indicates that his melody begins with a weak measure by preceding it with an odd number of measures—​either one or three—​of an accompaniment pattern or “vamp”; the first measure of the melody then completes a metrical two-​ or four-​cycle. “La donna è mobile,” from Rigoletto, is the locus classicus of this technique (example 4.26). An analysis of this song in the manner of Georgiades or Schenker might identify it as an instance of polymeter, because the orchestral and vocal two-​cycles—​pairs of  measures—​begin one measure apart. Example 4.27 shows, respectively, what I regard as stylistically incorrect and correct ways to hear the canzone. The incorrect, “German” hearing (4.27a) violates not only the quinario meter but the very Italianness of Verdi’s style.58 Similar settings of quinari by Verdi include the brindisi “Si colmi il calice” from Macbeth and the duet “Parigi, o cara” from La traviata. The brindisi, in , begins with one measure of accompanimental vamp. The duet, in , begins with a three-​measure vamp. A related case is example 4.28, from the storm scene in Rigoletto, one of Verdi’s greatest achievements in the realm of rhythm. Poetic lines are longer here: twelve-​ syllable senari doppi, set to an amphibrachic rhythm (weak–​strong–​weak). In example 4.28a, each line occupies four measures at a tempo of 84 to the half note. Verdi’s slurs in the accompaniment delineate the orchestra’s four-​cycles, which are 58 Compare the diegetic songs analyzed by Andrew Pau in “‘Sous le rythme de la chanson’: Rhythm, Text, and Diegetic Performance in Nineteenth-​Century French Opera,” Music Theory Online 21, no. 3 (September 2015).

Example 4.25.  La battaglia di Legnano, act 2: Coro, Scena Duetto e Finale Atto 2do

Example 4.25.  Continued

a. Coro, mm. 33–​45 b. Scena, mm. 36–​40

Example 4.26.  Verdi, Rigoletto, act 3: Scena e Canzone, 46–​51

134  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

Example 4.27.  Example 4.26 notated in 

a. In the German manner b. In the Italian manner metrical, defined by changes of harmony above the tonic pedal. The vocal melody falls into four-​measure phrases in Asioli’s sense, beginning one measure later than the orchestra. Earlier in the same number, when the same orchestral pattern was played without voices, the ritmo armonico proceeded in whole notes (the only value consistently articulated) at a speed of 42. Although one might entrain to a half-​note pulse once the voice enters, the orchestra maintains its whole-​note pattern, suggesting that the half-​note pulse is not the main pulse but a subdivision. Measured in whole-​note pulses, the melody proceeds in end-​accented four-​cycles, 2–​3–​4–​1. The orchestra’s four-​cycles are not perfectly straightforward, however; they feature a recurring accent on 4, a weak impulse, played by a solo oboe. The effect is simultaneously clocklike—​ in the manner of Bianconi’s “physical periods”—​and complex. This passage represents an early stage in a long accelerando that Verdi achieves without ever changing the metronomic tempo. When the peak of the accelerando arrives with the onset of the D-​minor stretta (example 4.28b), the twelve-​syllable line occupies two measures rather than four; the ritmo armonico moves in half notes rather than whole notes. In effect, the tempo has doubled. Characteristically for middle-​period Verdi, the new theme begins on a weak impulse; harmonies change, and phrases end, on strong impulses. Our final examples are taken from Il trovatore and involve notation in four-​ beat measures. Azucena’s song “Ai nostri monti,” which is similar in poetic meter and rhyme scheme to “Parigi, o cara” (La traviata), is heard twice within the opera’s final number. On its first occurrence, example 4.29, the song is notated in , again like “Parigi, o cara.” A single measure of vamp on the G-​major tonic is preceded by four measures of dominant pedal (not shown). Together, these factors mark Azucena’s vocal entrance as falling on 2 in the now-​familiar pattern 2–​3–​4–​1. Remarkably, the 2–​3–​4–​1 pattern is confirmed notationally when the song returns as part of a trio (example 4.30), notated in a  that is subdivided into triplets. The new notation, at the same speed but in measures four times as long, resembles Asioli’s re-​notation of a Haydn string quartet (­example 2.9) and García’s re-​ notation of a cabaletta from Semiramide (­example 2.22).

Example 4.28.  Verdi, Rigoletto, act 3: Scena, Terzetto, e Tempesta

a. Measures 152–​60 (beginning of the tempo d’attacco) b. Measures 222–​26 (beginning of the stretta)

136  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.29.  Verdi, Il trovatore, act 4, Finale, mm. 124–​32

Example 4.31, the cabaletta of Leonora’s entrance aria, is unusual. It sets two quatrains of settenari: Di tale amor, che dirsi mal può dalla parola, d’amor, che intendo io sola, il cor s’inebriò! Il mio destino compiersi non può che a lui dappresso. . . S’io non vivrò per esso, per esso io morirò!

The first two lines in each quatrain are enjambed, something that Verdi preferred to avoid until his late period. As Harold Powers has written, “The rhythm of musical phrases in Italian opera being grounded in verse rhythm, all else being equal, balanced melodic phrases are more readily engendered from lines that are end-​stopped syntactically.”59 In setting Leonora’s quatrains, Verdi ignored the enjambments, setting each line except the two versi tronchi more or less isorhythmically. Perhaps this is one of those cases, not rare in Verdi, in which he sketched the melody before he received the final text from the poet.60 59 Powers, “ ‘La dama velata’,” 317–​21. Powers quotes the 1857 letter in which Verdi expresses his dislike of enjambment. 60 See, for example, David Lawton’s introduction to the Ricordi critical edition of Il trovatore (1992), xxii–​xxiii. Puccini was also known to sketch melodies to verses of his own devising before he received the text from his librettists.

  Rhythm and Meter  T  137 Example 4.30.  The same, mm. 240–​42

Verdi’s metronome marking of quarter =​100 means that Leonora’s vocal line proceeds in four-​cycles at a rate of 50 to the half note. I suspect that many listeners would count Leonora’s four-​cycles 1–​2–​3–​4, treating melodic four-​ cycles as metric despite the countervailing factors detailed below. At the same

138  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.31.  Verdi, Il trovatore, act 1, Cavatina Leonora, mm. 147–​55 (beginning of the cabaletta)

time, the pizzicato bass delineates four-​ cycles beginning one-​ half measure earlier. The orchestra’s four-​cycles are defined by changes of harmony, but also by the bass rhythm long–​short–​short; this rhythm describes not the bass notes themselves but the distances between them (interonset intervals). The half-​ measure gap between accompaniment and melody is a result of Verdi’s notation in quadruple rather than duple measures,  rather than . Most comparable examples, such as “La donna è mobile” (example 4.26) and Mozart’s “Ah! chi mi dice mai” (example 4.9), are written in measures short enough to allow a gap of one notated measure, rather than half a measure, between orchestral and vocal four-​cycles. It is not easy to assign an accentual hierarchy to Leonora’s four-​cycles. Her first rhythmic impulse carries what Moritz Hauptmann called the energy of beginning, but this is rarely an important factor in Verdi’s music. Her second impulse carries an accento comune, as already noted. Her third impulse has her longest note so far, a dotted quarter, but this durational accent is arguably weakened by the trill. Her fourth impulse (m. 149) brings a change of harmony. The most plausible metrical options are 4–​1–​2–​3, favoring the Linguistic Stress Rule, and 2–​3–​4–​1, favoring the Harmony Rule and taking a cue from the accompaniment, which is simpler than the vocal line. The Suspension Rule effectively prohibits starting Leonora’s four-​cycles on 1 or 3, because the cadential 64 falls on the first half of m. 154. Unlike

  Rhythm and Meter  T  139 Schubert and Chopin, Italian composers of this period rarely violate the Suspension Rule, which mandates that cadential 64 chords fall on relatively strong beats.61 Leonora’s cabaletta takes the form AABA, with two poetic lines to each musical phrase. (This formal type will be discussed in c­ hapter 5.) The metrical situation becomes slightly clearer in the form’s second half, shown in example 4.32. The final cadence of the first half, on the downbeat of m. 155, is unequivocally Example 4.32.  The same, mm. 155–​70

61 On Schubert and Chopin see Edward Aldwell, Carl Schachter, and Allen Cadwallader, Harmony and Voice Leading, 5th ed. (Boston: Cengage, 2019), 354–​55; also Schenker, Free Composition, Fig. 137/​1.

140  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 4.32.  Continued

strong in both voice and orchestra, coinciding as it does with the poem’s first tronco ending. This suggests that Leonora’s melodic four-​cycles assume the metrical shape 2–​3–​4–​1, as the orchestra has suggested from the outset. Within the contrasting B phrase (mm. 155–​59), the Periodicity, Duple Bias, and Stability Rules place further strong impulses on the downbeats of m. 157, where the tonic returns, and m. 159, the Phrygian cadence that ends the phrase. The Linguistic Stress rule is violated both times: accenti comuni fall on the

  Rhythm and Meter  T  141 downbeats of mm. 156 and 158, not 157 and 159. Overall, accenti comuni in this cabaletta are only sporadically isochronous, despite the melodic isorhythm: they fall on the downbeats of mm. 148, 150, 152, 155, 156, 158, 160, and 163. This helps to explain why Leonora’s melody seems so unstable. That the upbeat to m. 160 is unaccompanied confirms (if confirmation is still needed) that the first impulse in Leonora’s four-​cycles is a weak one. The Harmony and Suspension Rules provide further confirmation throughout mm. 160–​ 62: harmonies change on the downbeats of mm. 161 and 162. One expects the AABA form to end in m. 163, but the final cadence is deferred for seven measures at a faster tempo (poco più mosso). These added measures complicate matters further. One hears, for instance, that the music of m. 162 is repeated twice more in mm. 163–​64, suggesting a metrical six-​cycle whose strongest impulse would fall on the downbeat of m. 162 (Pattern-​ Repetition Rule). This appearance is deceptive: not only does the tempo change at m. 163, but the orchestration changes as well, and the vocal melody is now slurred rather than staccato. In spite of the pattern-​repetition, m. 163 is best interpreted as metrically strong. A different melodic pattern is stated and repeated in mm. 165–​66, suggesting a metrical four-​cycle. But m. 167 continues the eighth-​note melodic rhythm and m. 168 brings a long note, a harmonic arrival similar to m. 159, and the beginning of a cadenza lunga. These factors make the downbeats of mm. 168 and 170 strong, the 1 of their respective four-​cycles. Complicated as they are, these considerations suggest the following as plausible metrical hearings of mm. 159–​70. I express each hearing as a series of metrical four-​cycles. The ritmo armonico proceeds in half-​measures throughout. 1. Twice 1–​2–​3–​4 for mm. 159–​62; 1–​2–​3–​4 for mm. 163–​64; 1–​2–​3–​4–​5–​6 (3 × 2) for mm. 165–​67; 1–​2–​3–​4 for mm. 168–​69, leading to 1 on the downbeat of m. 170 2. 1–​2–​3–​4–​5–​6 (3 × 2) for mm. 160–​62—​restarting the clock, as it were, after the fermata in m. 159; mm. 163–​70 as above Hearing no. 1 conforms more closely to the pattern established through m. 159, so it may be preferable on account of the Parallelism Rule. In this hearing the orchestra acts as timekeeper, showing a presence of mind that Leonora lacks. (A few minutes after this cabaletta, she will throw herself into the arms of the wrong man.) Listeners, like Leonora, are kept in a state of nervous excitement. Partly through rhythmic means, Verdi evokes the feverish quality of her love for Manrico. Malcom’s aria from La donna del lago and Leonora’s cabaletta from Il trovatore have in common the portrayal of characters in love-​induced agony. Working in a style that prized symmetry, clarity, and easy apprehensibility, Rossini and Verdi strained stylistic limits by manipulating their listeners’ desire for these very qualities.

C HA P T E R

Five

Musical Form

This chapter addresses forms typical of vocal pieces in primo ottocento opera. To keep the discussion as concise as possible, I will focus on one formal type for individual movements and another for entire numbers. Each formal type manifests itself within a wide range of variants. As with sonata form (which plays no part in this book), a given piece may be sufficiently removed from the textbook form that some listeners will perceive little relation between the two. Others will prefer to hear a radical transformation, or deformation, of the standard form, perhaps under the pressure of dramatic events. Such distant variants have been the subject of special attention from opera analysts in recent decades. Scholars—​ often the same scholars—​ have attempted to trace the evolution of ottocento forms from their pre-​Rossinian beginnings to their dissolution late in the century. Some of the relevant writings will be cited as this chapter proceeds.

Symmetry An old tradition in Western thought holds that musical form is rhythm on a larger scale, “rhythm writ large.”1 If by “form” one refers primarily to the grouping of musical material into discrete sections, the tradition is very old indeed. The idea that musical form is hierarchical is adumbrated in René Descartes’ Compendium of Music, written in 1618 but published in 1650. Descartes speaks of melodies that are built up from the single “member” (by which he seems to mean the single tactus) into units of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64. Grouping temporal units into pairs helps a listener to hold the melody in the mind as its size increases; each unit is mentally paired with another until “our imagination . . . conceives the whole melody as one entire thing composed of many equal members.”2 Small whole numbers form the link between the ratios of individual note-​durations and the proportions of sections within the whole. This phrase appears in multiple sources, including Philip T. Barford, “The Sonata Principle,” Music Review 13 (1952): 255–​63, where it is given in quotation marks. I have not been able to trace its origin. 2 Descartes, Musicae Compendium, 9; translation modified from Renatus Des-​ Cartes Excellent Compendium of Musick, trans. Thomas Harper (London, 1653), 5. 1

The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0006

  Musical Form  T  143 A similar if less totalizing impulse underlies Wolfgang Caspar Printz’s late seventeenth-​century discussion of poetic feet and their concatenation into musical phrases.3 Forty years later, Johann Mattheson wrote of “arithmetic” relations—​the grouping of individual notes into poetic feet—​and the “geometric” multiplication of these feet into the phrases of a minuet.4 Rameau, a contemporary of Mattheson’s, represents a similar strain of thinking, though without the emphasis on measurement by poetic feet.5 At the time that Mattheson and Rameau were writing, Italian operatic music was moving in the direction of regular periodicity under the twin influences of poetic reform, represented by the libretti of Metastasio, and the galant style of composers such as Vinci and Pergolesi. Short poetic lines, especially lines of seven or eight syllables, came to be preferred for musical settings. A single stanza rarely contained lines of different lengths, and the same line-​length was often maintained for multiple stanzas.6 Periodicity is an important factor in eighteenth-​century music, but it is easy to exaggerate its role.7 Functional dance music and songs of the most popular type are the best places to find the 16-​and 32-​ measure melodies of Descartes’ imagination. More elevated genres hint at perfect symmetry often but deliver it rarely. A telling case is Pergolesi’s Stabat mater (1736), which was revised in 1781 by the German theorist Georg Joseph Vogler, in part to regularize its asymmetrical phrase rhythms.8 It was during the nineteenth century, especially its second quarter, that symmetry of phrase rhythm exerted the greatest normative power. Although “square” has long been a pejorative in English-​language criticism, French critics clamored for phrases carrées (“square phrases”), and their Italian counterparts complained if a composer’s rhythms departed too much from conventional quadratura (construction in four-​bar units).9 Composition manuals of the primo ottocento, including those by Reicha and Asioli, carried similar Wolfgang Caspar Printz, Phrynis Mitilenæus, oder Satyrischer Componist, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Dresden, 1696), 3:100–​131. 4 Johann Mattheson, Kern melodischer Wissenschaft (Hamburg, 1737), 45–​46 and 109–​10. Much of this work reappears in Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739). 5 Rameau, Treatise on Harmony, trans. Philip Gossett (New York: Dover, 1971), 174–​78. 6 Fabbri, “Metrical and Formal Organization.” 7 For a good introductory discussion see Leonard Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer Books, 1980), ­chapter 3 (“Periodicity”). 8 Floyd K. Grave, “Abbé Vogler’s Revision of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 30 (1977): 43–​71. 9 See the articles Période and Symétrie in Castile-​Blaze, Dictionnaire de musique moderne (Paris, 1821); also Sebastien Werr, “Eingängigkeit und Symmetrie. Zu Melodie und Rhythmus bei Verdi und Petrella,” in Belliniana et alia musicologica. Festschrift für Friedrich Lippmann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Daniel Brandenburg and Thomas Lindner (Wien: Praesens, 2004), 301–​9. The term quadratura was used by Emanuele Bidera in 1853; see Giorgio Pagannone, “Mobilità strutturale della lyric form: Sintassi verbale e sintassi musicale nel melodramma italiano del primo Ottocento,” Analisi 7, no. 20 (May 1996): 2–​17. For Richard Wagner’s perspective, see his essay “On Operatic Poetry and Composition in Particular,” in Prose Works, vol. VI, trans. William Ashton Ellis (London, 1897), 149–​72. 3

144  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera advice: repeat the same melodic rhythms symmetrically; write phrases of equal length, preferably four measures; pair each phrase with another except where an exceptional effect is desired.10 Berlioz notwithstanding, it was not until after midcentury that a significant number of composers and critics decided that the time for phrases carrées in serious opera had come and gone. Even then, change came slowly. Symmetry and adherence to conventional forms represented Italian composers’ response to the world in which they lived, a world in which the consumption of operatic music had spread far beyond the aristocracy. Operatic music was now expected to be understandable, even memorable, on first hearing. As Descartes had realized two centuries earlier, memorability is greatly aided by symmetry. It is also aided by repetition, which plays an enormous role in operatic music of the primo ottocento.

Rossini and Repetition It is useful to distinguish repetition from return.11 A return is the recurrence of something heard earlier, after something else has intervened. A repetition is recurrence without such intervention. The “something” that is repeated, or returns, may be almost any musical feature, but especially one that exhibits enough internal organization to be memorable: a melodic motive or phrase; a distinctive chord progression; a distinctive series of note values; even the pattern of strong and weak beats within a measure. Neither repetition nor return need be exact. For example, a melodic repetition that is embellished or transposed is still a repetition, so long as the relation to the original is recognizable. Leaving return to one side, we may classify repetitions as either complementary or enchained, although the distinction is not watertight. A complementary repetition corresponds to Bianconi’s “grammatical period,” discussed in the previous chapter, or to the pairing of musical units described by theorists from Descartes to the present: a second statement is understood to pair with a first, completing a rhythmic and formal unit at a larger level. Examples of complementary repetition include the antecedent and consequent phrases in a parallel period (phrase +​phrase =​period) and the repetition of a basic idea within the presentation phrase of a sentence (basic idea +​basic idea =​presentation phrase). Victor

10 Reicha, Treatise on Melody, trans. Peter M. Landey (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2000); Asioli, Il maestro di composizione, vols. 3–​4. 11 The ideas in this section are influenced by the writings of Victor Zuckerkandl, especially Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World, trans. Willard Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956) and The Sense of Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959). See also Zuckerkandl, “Kreis und Pfeil im Werk Beethovens,” in Das menschliche Drama in der Welt der Ideen, ed. Adolf Portmann (Zurich: Rhein-​Verlag, 1965), 285–​317. Zuckerkandl’s thought also plays a role in Elizabeth Margulis’s On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

  Musical Form  T  145 Zuckerkandl has characterized complementary repetition with the image of a circle, which is closed by the completion of the larger unit.12 Unlike complementary repetition, enchained repetition points toward the future. It corresponds to Bianconi’s “physical period” and to Christopher Hasty’s “projection.” Zuckerkandl’s image for it is an arrow.13 An effect of enchainment is most readily fostered if the end of one musical unit, or group, acts simultaneously as the beginning of the next unit, eliminating any gap between them. That grouping overlap does not exclude complementarity is proved by the paired four-​measure phrases in Bach’s chaconne for solo violin, most of which close into each other while completing one of the eight-​measure blocks from which that piece is built. Conversely, enchainment is not excluded where grouping overlap is absent. The repetitions of a one-​measure motive in the development section of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (first movement) are enchained, although the motivic statements do not overlap.14 To use the language of the nineteenth-​century theorist A. B. Marx, enchained repetition creates a Gang, a passage without a foreseeable endpoint. Complementary repetition corresponds to Marx’s Satz and Periode, musical units whose goals are foreseeable because, in Marx’s Idealist account, the music generates them internally.15 Rossini made enchained repetition a defining feature of his style.16 One thinks immediately of the famous crescendo; part of one is shown in example 5.1. As a phenomenon, the Rossini crescendo is inherently instrumental; where solo singing is present, as in Basilio’s aria “La calunnia” from Il barbiere di Siviglia, the crescendo sounds in the orchestra, not the vocal line. This is because grouping overlap is a necessary element of the crescendo, and a soloist needs to breathe. Grouping overlap is a defining feature of Bianconi’s “physical period,” of which the crescendo may be understood as a subtype. The exchanges between Mustafà and Lindoro in the first-​act finale of L’italiana in Algeri (­example 4.19) do not increase in volume, but they resemble a crescendo in other respects, including the alternation between tonic and dominant statements. The effect of enchainment, which here extends to the vocal lines, is made possible by the fact that this is an ensemble: Lindoro begins to sing as Mustafà ends and vice versa. Example 5.2 shows the beginning of a crescendo in a duet cabaletta from Semiramide (the cabaletta’s opening appeared in ­example 4.10). Semiramide and Arsace answer each other with tonic and dominant statements in the manner of Mustafà and Lindoro, with the difference that their statements are non-​overlapping. The vocal repetitions are complementary on a small scale: each I–​V progression is answered by V–​I, like the two statements of a basic idea in a presentation phrase (see, e.g., mm. 280–​87). By contrast, the orchestra’s repetitions are enchained: four 12 Zuckerkandl, “Kreis und Pfeil,” 293–​99. 13 Zuckerkandl’s metaphorical use of the circle and the arrow differs from Karol Berger’s in Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 14 The passage begins at m. 151, thirteen measures after the repeat sign. The motive is played by the first violins. 15 See Marx’s essay “Form in Music,” in A. B. Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven, ed. and trans. Scott Burnham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 55–​90. 16 See Emanuele Senici, “Rossinian Repetitions,” in The Invention of Beethoven and Rossini, ed. Nicholas Mathew and Benjamin Walton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 236–​62.

146  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 5.1.  Rossini, Tancredi, Sinfonia, mm. 96–​107

measures of I are followed by four measures of V closing into four measures of I followed by four measures of V closing into etc. etc. (The lack of commas in this account is intentional.) The situation is that of Georgiades’s Gerüstbau, Schmid’s “open” construction, and Bianconi’s “physical periods.” The orchestra leads the voices, not the other way around; the overall effect is one of enchainment. Although the volume of orchestral sound cannot increase beyond a certain limit, the number of repetitions of an orchestral formula cannot be predicted in advance. Rossini uses complementary repetition most conspicuously at the beginnings of slow movements and cabalettas. These openings often take the form of parallel periods. The final cabaletta in La Cenerentola, “Non più mesta,” is one example among many. Julian Budden cites a few cases in which symmetry of phrase rhythm is joined by exceptional melodic simplicity. Two of these, both from Rossini’s serious operas, are the cabaletta “Di tanti palpiti” (Tancredi) and the preghiera “Dal tuo stellate soglio” (Mosè in Egitto). Budden takes the conjunction of these two qualities as a marker of popular style, and he asserts that popular style was not Rossini’s natural mode of expression.17

17 Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols. (London: Praeger, 1973–​1981), 1:10–​11.

  Musical Form  T  147 Example 5.2.  Rossini, Semiramide, act 2, Duetto Semiramide–​Arsace, mm. 278–​95

148  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 5.2.  Continued

The incorporation of popular style in the guise of symmetrical phrase lengths, complementary repetition, and formal return is more evident in the music of the next generation of Italian composers, although this group was younger than Rossini by less than a decade. They included Mercadante (b. 1795), Donizetti (b. 1797), and Bellini (b. 1801). As Budden notes, Italian opera, both serious and comic, increasingly blurred the distinction between high and low styles. If common tailors were singing “Di tanti palpiti” in the streets, as they do in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, Italian opera had forsworn the traditional hierarchies of genres and social classes.18

18 Budden, 1:11.

  Musical Form  T  149

Lyric Form In operas of the 1830s and 1840s, many movements set to lyric verse assume the same basic form. This formal type, which is most simply characterized as AABA or AABC, was well known to composers from the eighteenth century onward. In an essay on Italian opera, the composer Luigi Dallapiccola called the form a “musical quatrain,” having already used Quartina (“Quatrain”) as the title of a four-​phrase piece in his Quaderno musicale di Annalibera.19 A decade later, the Hungarian musicologist Dénes Bartha used “quatrain” to describe AABA forms in the music of the Viennese Classic composers.20 Following Bartha, I used “quatrain” in Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music and in two later essays on Chopin.21 Friedrich Lippmann discusses Bellini’s use of AABA form in his writings from the late 1960s onward, but he does not employ a special term for it. The term “musical quatrain” has fallen into disfavor among musicologists, chiefly because each musical phrase in an AABA form typically sets two lines of poetry, not one; a poetic quatrain corresponds to one-​half of a musical quatrain. Dallapiccola accounted for this discrepancy by speaking of “a quatrain of two-​line pairs,” but Anglophone musicologists have found the term confusing nevertheless. A different term was found, and it comes in at least three variants: lyric form, lyric prototype, and lyric binary. The first two were introduced into opera scholarship by Joseph Kerman in a groundbreaking study of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra.22 Kerman may have borrowed “lyric form” from the discourse of American popular song, where AABA describes a classic thirty-​two-​bar song form and “lyric form” describes the form of its lyrics.23 Since Kerman, many authors have written about lyric form in Italian opera. Most important, for theorists, are accounts by Steven Huebner (1992, 2017) and James Hepokoski (1997).24 Two articles by Giorgio Pagannone (1996, 1997) build on Huebner’s earlier study25; in turn, Pagannone’s influence is acknowledged in 19 Dallapiccola, “Words and Music in Nineteenth-​Century Italian Opera,” Perspectives of New Music 5 (1966): 121–​33; Quaderno musicale di Annalibera (Milan: Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, 1953). 20 Bartha, “Song Form and the Concept of ‘Quatrain’,” in Haydn Studies: Proceedings of the International Haydn Conference, Washington, D.C., 1975, ed. Jens Peter Larsen, Howard Serwer, and James Webster (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 353–​55. 21 Rothstein, “Ambiguity in the Themes of Chopin’s First, Second, and Fourth Ballades,” Intégral 8 (1995): 1–​ 50; “The Form of Chopin’s Polonaise-​Fantasy,” in Music Theory in Concept and Practice, ed. James Baker, David Beach, and Jonathan Bernard (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 337–​59. 22 Kerman, “Lyric Form and Flexibility in Simon Boccanegra,” Studi verdiani 1 (1982): 47–​62. 23 Aaron Frankel, Writing the Broadway Musical (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1977). 24 Huebner, “Lyric Form in ‘Ottocento’ Opera,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 117 (1992): 123–​47; and Les opéras de Verdi: Éléments d’un langage musico-​dramatique (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2017), 157–​232; Hepokoski, “Ottocento Opera as Cultural Drama: Generic Mixtures in Il trovatore,” in Verdi’s Middle Period, 1849–​1859, ed. Martin Chusid (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 147–​96. 25 Pagannone, “Mobilità strutturale della lyric form”; and “Aspetti della melodia verdiana: ‘Periodo’ e ‘Barform’ a confronto,” Studi verdiani 12 (1997): 48–​66.

150  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Huebner’s recent book. At the time of this writing, neither Pagannone’s articles nor Huebner’s book have appeared in English.

The Basics In its paradigmatic or textbook form, a lyric form consists of four phrases of equal length, totaling either 16 or 32 measures, in the pattern AABA or AABC. A lyric form normally sets eight lines of poetry, which may be articulated as a double quatrain, a sestet plus a couplet, or an octave subdivided in some other way. Normally, a perfect authentic cadence ends phrase 2, the midpoint of the form; another ends phrase 4. The two PACs lend the form a binary (two-​part) quality; hence the term “lyric binary,” favored by Hepokoski. At the same time, the contrasting nature of phrase 3 and, in the AABA type, the thematic return in phrase 4 give the form a ternary aspect, corresponding to the “small ternary” described by William Caplin.26 In the Austro-​German quatrain forms described by Bartha, phrase 4 is often an exact restatement of phrase 2. Huebner rightly notes that this pattern is rare in Italian opera, where melodies tend to be end-​weighted. For one thing, phrase 4 is where the highest vocal pitch tends to appear. This vocal climax is associated with the form’s most emphatic cadence: the cadence of phrase 4 is rhetorically enhanced relative to that of phrase 2. Dallapiccola has been criticized for maintaining, against the evidence, that the climax of a “musical quatrain” is normally reached in the third phrase. In the AABA type of lyric form, phrase 3 corresponds to what Caplin calls the “contrasting middle” in a small ternary form. This phrase is normally subdivided into two equal subphrases: 2 measures +​2 measures in a 16-​measure lyric form, 4 measures +​4 measures in a 32-​measure form. This subdivision is usually created by the repetition of a two-​or four-​measure idea. As Huebner points out with reference to the 16-​measure model, repetition of a two-​measure idea in phrase 3 represents fragmentation in relation to the complementary repetition of four-​ measure phrases (antecedent and consequent) in phrases 1–​2. Fragmentation helps to establish the medial function of phrase 3.27 The third phrase in a lyric form corresponds to the third phrase in a 16-​measure minuet, the phrase following the central repeat sign. As described by the eighteenth-​century theorist Joseph Riepel, this phrase is typically structured in one of three ways, which Riepel labels Monte (“mountain”), Fonte (“fountain”), and Ponte (“bridge”).28 Monte denotes an ascending sequence, its second statement sounding usually one step higher than its first. Fonte designates a descending

26 Caplin, Classical Form, 13–​15. 27 Huebner, “Lyric Form,” 125 and passim. 28 Joseph Riepel, Grundregeln zur Tonordnung insgemein (Frankfurt, 1755).

  Musical Form  T  151 sequence, its second statement usually one step lower than its first. Ponte describes a less mobile phrase; it often consists of a four-​measure dominant pedal or dominant prolongation, which prepares the return of the tonic in phrase 4. Emphasis on the dominant in phrase 3 is typical of both genres, lyric form and minuet, but in lyric forms a Ponte frequently ends with a root-​position tonic rather than a dominant. This tonic may come about using either of two patterns: V–​I, V–​I (complementary repetition) or V–​V–​V–​I. Philip Gossett has referred to the first of these options as a holding pattern.29 Example 5.3, from Verdi’s Ernani (1844), is a lyric form of the AABA type. It is a declaration of love by Carlo, King of Spain, to the lady Elvira. Because Carlo sings first in this duet movement, his closing phrase is followed not by a coda, as would generally happen in an aria, but by a response from Elvira. She rejects Carlo’s love, so instead of repeating his lyric form she sings one of her own.

Example 5.3.  Verdi, Ernani, act 1, Duetto Carlo–​Elvira, mm. 69–​85

29 The term first appears in Gossett, Anna Bolena and the Artistic Maturity of Gaetano Donizetti (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 39–​40 and passim.

152  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 5.3.  Continued

Carlo’s lyric form sets two quatrains of ottonari: Da quel dì che t’ho veduta bella come un primo amore, la mia pace fu perduta, tuo fu il palpito del core. Cedi, Elvira, ai voti miei: puro amor desio da te; gioia e vita essere tu déi del tuo amante, del tuo re.

The rhyme scheme is abab/​cdcd. The librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, created a slight inconvenience for Verdi by placing his two tronco endings not in lines 4 and 8, the ends of the two quatrains, but in lines 6 and 8, the ends of the two couplets within the second quatrain. As we shall see, this placement of tronco endings is not uncommon. Verdi sets each poetic line to two measures of music; each four-​measure phrase sets a couplet. Typically for settings of ottonari, he begins each phrase with a two-​ syllable upbeat, lasting one quarter-​note beat in each phrase. He repeats words

  Musical Form  T  153 within every phrase except the first, permitting an acceleration of note values as cadences are approached. In this and subsequent examples, the phrases of a lyric form are marked with numerals in rectangular boxes. Phrases 1–​2 of example 5.3 form a parallel period, but the harmonic vocabulary is sparse: neither phrase includes a harmony of pre-​ dominant function (the E♭-​major 64 in m. 75 embellishes the tonic). Phrase 1 ends with an imperfect authentic cadence. Phrase 2 begins exactly like phrase 1, but it builds to a higher melodic climax and concludes with a PAC. The first quatrain ends with “core,” a parola piana. Rather than abbreviate “core” to “cor” for the sake of a tronco ending, Verdi accepts the piano ending, which will make Carlo’s final cadence seem stronger by comparison. Phrase 3 is a Ponte: it repeats the progression V/​V–​V, with a three-​measure pedal on the secondary dominant. Verdi bypasses the tronco ending of line 6 by reordering words: instead of Piave’s “puro amor desio da te,” he sets “puro amor da te desio,” adding “ah!” on the dominant seventh to destabilize the phrase-​ending still further. He will restore Piave’s word-​order in the coda. Phrase 4 begins much like phrases 1 and 2, but it reaches the climactic F4 earlier than before, on the downbeat of the second measure, where phrase 1 had D and phrase 2 had E♭. Phrase 4 is further enhanced by the inclusion, for the first time, of a cadential pre-​dominant (m. 83). Carlo has prepared his final cadence carefully, saving the reminder of his royal status to his final syllable. If he was trying to play on Elvira’s assumed loyalty, he needn’t have bothered: she disrupts his cadence with Spanish fury (the string accompaniment suggests castanets) and an abrupt turn to the parallel minor (example 5.4). No insinuating upbeat for her; it is not until her fourth line that she accents her ottonari in the conventional way. Until then she begins each two-​measure unit on a downbeat. Measure 85 is simultaneously the sixteenth measure of Carlo’s lyric form and the first measure of Elvira’s. Example 5.4 shows her response in full, minus Carlo’s interjections and the orchestra’s “Spanish” rhythms. This is a lyric form of the AABC type, beginning in B♭ minor and ending in the parallel major. Elvira’s first two measures contain a complete cadential progression, but they represent only half of phrase 1; the phrase ends with the half cadence in m. 88. Her rhyme scheme, considered in itself, is identical to Carlo’s, but in relation to his it is ebeb/​fdfd. Elvira’s even-​numbered lines continue Carlo’s rhyme scheme, binding the two double quatrains into a single poetic unit of sixteen lines. The continuing rhyme scheme is most noticeable at the end of each lyric form’s opening period: both poetically and melodically, m. 92 rhymes with m. 77. Fiero sangue d’Aragona nelle vene a me trascorre . . . Lo splendor d’una corona leggi al cor non puote imporre . . . Aspirar non deggio al trono, né i favor vogl’io d’un re. L’amor vostro, o sire, è un dono troppo grande o vil per me.

154  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 5.4.  The same, mm. 85–​99

Like Carlo, Elvira opens with a parallel period, but hers modulates to the mediant, D♭ major, whereas his remained in the tonic throughout. Phrase 3 seems like a typical contrasting middle in its 2 +​2 subdivision and internal repetition, but it prolongs the tonic of D♭ rather than the dominant of B♭. The home dominant

  Musical Form  T  155 is squeezed into the second half of m. 96, which belongs textually to phrase 4 and acts musically as a long anacrusis. The main body of phrase 4 consists of what Caplin calls an expanded cadential progression—​expanded, that is, in relation to mm. 85–​86; in relation to the four-​measure phrase norm it represents a contraction. Elvira’s anacrusis places the accento comune of line 7, “do-​no,” on the first downbeat of the phrase (m. 97), where one would normally expect the third syllable to fall in ottonario. As a result, the phrase is three measures long rather than four. Like Carlo, Elvira loses a measure in conclusion.30 Example 5.5 is taken from the final duet in Mercadante’s Il giuramento (1837), an opera based on the same literary source as Ponchielli’s La Gioconda (1876). The excerpt is musically straightforward, but the relation of music to text is unusual. Mercadante’s librettist, Gaetano Rossi, provided eight ottonari, organized on the page as a sestet plus a couplet. Tronco endings appear at the ends of these two divisions. The sentence structure and rhyme scheme (a1a1bca2da2d) cut across the 6 +​2 division of the printed libretto and suggest a different division: 2 +​2 +​4, two couplets (only one of them rhyming) plus a quatrain. S’io l’amava! Sciagurata! L’odi, e mori disperata. L’adorava qual s’adora d’un suo Nume augusta immago. Era il Ciel cui aspirava . . . la mia speme . . . il mio tesor. E quell’ angelo mi amava quanto amar, bramar può un cor.

Mercadante uses the opening couplet to end the scena (not shown). This couplet, with its violent imprecations (“Die in despair, wretch!”), is introductory, although versi sciolti have already given way to versi lirici. Mercadante’s setting is effective, but he has left himself only six lines for the lyric form. Phrases 1–​2 are no problem: beginning with line 3 has the advantage of placing the first tronco ending at the end of the opening period (m. 9). But the second tronco ending then appears early, at the end of phrase 3 (m. 13), and at this point the text has been exhausted. To compose phrase 4, Mercadante must repeat two lines of text. Instead of repeating the final couplet, he repeats lines 5–​6, the end of the sestet. Normally, repeating one or more complete lines is reserved for the coda, if there is one; textual repetition signals that the main part of the form has ended. Here the poet has provided a symmetrical form, but the composer has treated it asymmetrically. The effect is slightly odd, but perhaps not out of place in the fevered atmosphere of this opera’s final act.

30 Verdi leaves the desinenza tronca of line 6 unmodified (m. 96, downbeat), but he provides rhythmic continuity through Carlo’s countermelody (not shown).

Example 5.5.  Mercadante, Il giuramento, act 3, Duetto Viscardo–​Elaisa, tempo d’attacco

  Musical Form  T  157

Expansion of the Closing Phrase Except for the addition of a coda—​an external expansion—​the most common modification of lyric form is an internal expansion of phrase 4, the closing phrase.31 Example 5.6 shows two cabalettas in lyric form, both by Bellini. The first is from an early opera, Bianca e Fernando (1826, rev. 1828). The second is from Norma (1831). In both operas the cabaletta concludes the cavatina, or entrance aria, of the prima donna.

Example 5.6.  Bellini, two versions of a cabaletta

31 See the discussion of internal and external expansions in Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, ­chapter 3.

158  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 5.6.  Continued

a. Bianca e Fernando, Cavatina Bianca b. Norma, Cavatina Norma

The music of the two cabalettas is essentially identical until phrase 4, which Bellini expands differently in each case. In Bianca, phrase 4 ends with an imperfect rather than a perfect authentic cadence (m. 16). This failure to reach full closure motivates a repetition of phrase 4 together with its text, this time reaching the expected PAC (m. 20). In a literal sense, the lyric form has five phrases, but phrase 5 is understood as a correction of the less-​than-​satisfactory phrase 4; together, phrases 4–​5 serve the function of a closing phrase. In addition to the rectified

  Musical Form  T  159 cadence, phrase 5 includes in its second measure the leap to A5, which matches the leap in the second measure of phrase 2. The concluding expansion is carried out more subtly in Norma. In contrast to the four-​measure phrases that preceded it, phrase 4 is eight measures long, but these eight measures are not subdivided symmetrically. After the first measure, Bellini uses the leap from C5 to F5, first heard in phrase 1, as the basis for a series of ever-​ higher leaps, exhausting the final line of text in the process (the final word is “avrò”). The clarinets (not shown) enter on the downbeat of m. 14, where the expansion begins; a horn joins them on the downbeat of m. 17, where an authentic cadence is evaded by a leap in the bass to A, scale degree 3. The evaded cadence signals that the phrase is being expanded; the repetition of the words “e cielo avrò” also suggests the presence of extra measures. Measures 17–​19 repeat mm. 14–​16 in varied form, using the bass line of mm. 15–​16 (A–​B​♭–​C) and embellishing the melody’s upward leaps. The cadence is reached in m. 20, just as in the Bianca cabaletta. In Reicha’s terms, there are two ritmi di quattro battute—​rhythms of four measures—​inside the expanded closing phrase: mm. 14–​17 and 17–​20, with an elision or battute supposta at m. 17.32 (I am disregarding the text temporarily.) But m. 13 cannot stand alone; it must be added to the first of the two ritmi. The expanded phrase thus subdivides rhythmically as (1 +​4) +​4, modified by the battute supposta so that nine measures appear as eight. A hypermetrical analysis yields different results: mm. 14, 17, and 20 are downbeat measures, creating a rare three-​bar hypermeter. An accento comune falls on each of the three hyperdownbeats. Example 5.7 is the final cabaletta from Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux (1837). The setting is mostly syllabic. Donizetti’s melody is built like a mosaic, using a series of three-​note melodic particles, each having the amphibrachic rhythm short–​long–​short. These amphibrachs are initially separated by rests. The poetic meter is the twelve-​syllable senario doppio, which, as an even-​numbered meter, has not only a fixed accentuation but a fixed subdivision: (3 +​3) +​(3 +​3). In the printed libretto, the eight lines are laid out as a sestet plus a couplet, a division matched by the placement of tronco endings. At the same time, the rhyme scheme suggests a double quatrain, abab/​cdcd. Quel sangue versato /​al cielo s’innalza, Giustizia domanda, /​reclama vendetta . . . Già l’angiol di morte /​fremente v’ incalza . . . Supplizio inaudito /​entrambi vi aspetta . . . Sì vil tradimento, /​delitto sì rio Clemenza non merta, /​non merta pietà . . . Nell’ ultimo istante /​volgetevi a Dio; Ei solo perdono /​conceder potrà.33 32 See Reicha, Treatise on Melody, 26–​27, and the accompanying examples. 33 The text in the Ricordi vocal score differs slightly from that given here.

Example 5.7.  Donizetti, Roberto Devereux, Aria finale, cabaletta

  Musical Form  T  161 Donizetti uses one doubled line in each of the first two phrases, as though the meter were simple senario, but phrase 3 breaks the pattern. Now he treats each half-​line as a single melodic particle, not a pair of particles: syllables 1–​4 form an upbeat to syllable 5, the accento comune of the six-​syllable hemistich. Phrase 3 has the usual subdivision into 2 +​2 measures, consuming lines 3–​4. Phrase 4 is hugely expanded, occupying more than half the length of the lyric form, and it sets the entire second half of the text. Given the rate of declamation in phrases 1–​2, Donizetti was arguably faced with too much text in this instance, the opposite of the problem faced by Mercadante in example 5.5. How does Donizetti create a single phrase of seventeen measures? Chiefly, of course, by delaying the final cadence. This is most obvious in mm. 21–​23, where an expected authentic cadence is evaded by stepwise motion away from the dominant note in the bass. But that dominant was reached only in the phrase’s eighth measure (m. 21), so there is more to the expansion than this. Example 5.8 illustrates by comparing phrase 4 to phrase 1; Donizetti’s bass line is represented

Example 5.8.  Comparison of phrases 1 and 4

162  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera by circled scale-​degree numerals below the staff.34 Measures 14–​16 correspond closely to mm. 2–​4, but mm. 17–​19 are based on mm. 4–​6 transposed to E minor (compare the bass lines). The arrival on an E minor harmony at m. 19 coincides with the end of line 6, where the first tronco ending appears. But this arrival does not sound like an ending: not only is the harmony wrong, but motivic and rhythmic patterns continue to repeat every half-​measure, as they did in mm. 17–​18, exhibiting the formal function that Caplin calls “continuation.” (Huebner spoke of “development” in his 1992 study of lyric form; he has since adopted Caplin’s term.) The end of the text coincides with the evaded cadence on the downbeat of m. 23. Measures 19–​22 are repeated, in free variation, in mm. 23–​ 29, leading to the final cadence at m. 30. The passage following the evaded cadence repeats the last line and a half of text, something that would more typically happen in a coda.

Contraction and Fusion of Phrases In his essay on Simon Boccanegra, Kerman describes two important variants of lyric form. The first has already been discussed: the replacement of the final A phrase with a new cadential phrase, C. The second variant, which is characteristic of Verdi’s music from the 1850s onward, dispenses with the contrasting middle, leaving a three-​phrase form that Kerman labels AAC. This consists of two similar phrases, which may or may not form a period, followed by a cadential phrase of equal or greater length. The pattern resembles the “bar” form described by Wagner in Die Meistersinger and reified by the twentieth-​ century Wagner analyst Alfred Lorenz.35 Huebner agrees with Kerman, but he adds that the final phrase may include fragmentation, thus incorporating into the closing phrase a function characteristic of the B phrase in the four-​phrase model.36 Example 5.9 is from Maria di Rohan (1843), one of Donizetti’s last operas. It shows the first movement of Maria’s cavatina, which itself forms part of the opera’s introduzione. The textual form is unusual: ten settenari are subdivided 4 +​2 +​4, two quatrains flanking a rhyming couplet. (I give the text as it stands in the critical edition.) Donizetti’s setting contains two strophes of unequal length; the first sets lines 1–​6, the second lines 7–​10. The only tronco ending comes in the final line, but Donizetti creates another by abbreviating the word “dolore” (line 6) to “dolor” at the end of the first strophe (m. 176). 34 These numerals recall the usage established by Robert Gjerdingen, but they really derive from Aloys Emanuel Förster (1748–​1823). Förster will make a return appearance in ­chapter 10. 35 Stephen McClatchie, Analyzing Wagner’s Operas: Alfred Lorenz and the German Nationalist Ideology (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1998). 36 Huebner, “Lyric Form,” 137–​41.

  Musical Form  T  163 Example 5.9.  Donizetti, Maria di Rohan, Introduzione, mm. 158–​90: The primo tempo of Maria’s cavatina

164  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 5.9.  Continued

Cupa, fatal mestizia in questo core ha stanza . . . Qual entro urna gelida qui muta è la speranza. Del viver mio son l’ore contate dal dolore . . . Conforto ne’ miei gemiti trovo al penar soltanto . . . E il pianto, ancora il pianto è grave error per me!

As often happens with odd-​numbered meters, Donizetti does not consistently place secondary accents of the verse on strong beats of the measure. Musical and poetic accents align in lines 1–​2: the first syllable of “cupa” and the second syllable of “in questo” are placed in relatively strong metrical positions. The two lines together form phrase 1. Because phrases 1 and 2 begin in parallel fashion, the first syllable of line 3 falls on a downbeat; yet “qual” is a weak syllable, as is “del” at the beginning of phrase 3. Phrases 1 and 2 end with imperfect authentic cadences, the first in A minor and the second in C major, using the same melodic-​rhythmic formula. Because the two phrases possess the same degree of closure, they do not combine to form a period.37 Huebner used the ambiguous term “balanced phrases” to describe this phenomenon in his 1992 study, but in his recent book he adopts Abramo Basevi’s term “musical 37 Compare Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1782–​1793), 2:457–​60; Introductory Essay on Composition, trans. Nancy K. Baker (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 56–​57.

  Musical Form  T  165 economy.” Basevi’s explanation is worth quoting: “[I]‌n the ‘economical’ procedure, each phrase seems to be followed by the same punctuation mark, either a comma or a period, so that the effect is of simple repetition, whereas in the usual procedure the first phrase seems to end with a comma and the second with a period; thus, they lack equality, one being the necessary complement of the other.”38 If only the vocal line is counted, phrases 1 and 2 are each four measures long. Because the two-​measure prelude, played by cellos and basses pizzicato, is used as an interlude between the phrases, and because the interlude’s first measure coincides with the last measure of phrase 1, the literal length of the two “economical” phrases is nine measures rather than eight, eleven measures if the prelude is included. Measures 169–​76 form an unbroken phrase of eight measures, but these incorporate both medial and cadential functions, like the continuation/​cadential phrase of a Classical sentence.39 Measures 169–​72 seem at first like a regular B phrase, with the typical fragmentation into two-​measure units. But m. 172 fails to bring the expected resolution to C major. Like Mercadante in example 5.5, Donizetti has reached the end of his apparent B phrase where a unit of poetry also ends; as in example 5.7, he has four lines left to set while only one phrase remains in the four-​phrase model. His solution differs from either of those examples. He reserves the last quatrain of text for a second strophe, so he must repeat words at the end of strophe 1. Instead of Mercadante’s solution, using two earlier lines for a final A phrase, Donizetti composes a second passage of fragmentation, a descending-​fifths sequence extending from m. 172 to the downbeat of m. 174. The sequence is based on the pizzicato motive from the prelude, and it reaches C major two measures later than expected. Only here is the final syllable of “dolore” sung. Having reached C major, Donizetti repeats the line “contate dal dolore” and fuses the expanded B phrase (mm. 169–​74) to a three-​measure cadential progression in C major (mm. 174–​76). What in a simpler piece might have been two separate phrases, B and C, is fused into a single phrase, BC, which does not subdivide symmetrically. The overall proportions of strophe 1 are symmetrical, 4 +​4 +​8, if only the vocal line is considered; but the internal construction—​including the lack of any PAC before the end—​more nearly resembles that of a Classical sentence than a lyric form. Like the “economical” pair of A phrases, the strophe begins and ends in different keys, A minor and C major. In strophe 2, the two “economical” phrases are reduced to a single phrase (mm. 179–​82), corresponding to the original phrase 1. Measures 183–​86, set to the poem’s final couplet, represent a B phrase that restates the descending-​fifths sequence of mm. 172–​74; Riepel would have called this a Fonte. Now C major is treated as III in A minor, beginning a cadential progression in the latter key. Although line 10, like line 6, is repeated to fill out the strophe, the repetition does not signal a coda because the strophe-​ending cadence has not yet been reached. The final tonic harmony has a major (Picardy) third; an A-​major coda follows. The proportions of the second strophe are 4 +​(4 +​4), which is probably perceived as a contraction of the earlier 4 +​4 +​8. 38 Basevi, The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, 22. 39 Caplin, Classical Form, 40–​45.

166  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

Lyric Form, Sentence, and Bar Form Example 5.9 has demonstrated that a lyric form of the AABC type may resemble a 16-​measure sentence, especially if the two A phrases do not form a parallel period. In that example, the lyric form’s first half comprised a pair of “economical” phrases. Another option for the first half of a lyric form is an eight-​measure sentence. This occurs in Gabriele’s aria “Sento avvampar nell’anima” from act 2 of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra (1857), in which a straightforward sentence, 2 +​2 +​4, ends with a PAC in the tonic key, followed by a fused BC phrase in the manner of example 5.9 and ending, like it, in the parallel major. This and other lyric forms in Simon Boccanegra will be examined in ­chapter 14. Pagannone has called attention to situations in which a bar form, as he prefers to call it, substitutes for a lyric form’s closing phrase. This expands the lyric form beyond the 16-​or 32-​measure model. Because the closing bar form brings new melodic material, this is a modification of the AABC type. In his book, Huebner devotes a substantial discussion to this and other lyric-​form variants that incorporate bar forms at various points.40 He also comments on the issue of nomenclature. He prefers to avoid “sentence” because it has no equivalent in French or Italian, the languages in which he and Pagannone are writing; yet he prefers to avoid “bar form” owing to its Germanic connotations.41 His proposed solution is less than satisfactory: he adopts Pagannone’s term “anapestic phrase,” a locution inspired (as Pagannone indicates) by Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer’s The Rhythmic Structure of Music (1960).42 Pagannone calls a parallel period “iambic” because its second cadence is stronger than its first, and a bar form “anapestic” because the two shorter segments are answered by a longer segment with more complete closure. North American theorists have rejected Cooper and Meyer’s ascription of accents and unaccents to entire passages of music; Meyer himself disavowed the idea in later years.43 In the following discussion, I will continue to use the Schoenberg/​ Caplin term “sentence” in preference to Pagannone’s “bar form” or Huebner’s “anapestic phrase.”44 Two examples discussed by Pagannone and Huebner involve a minor-​mode lyric form that breaks into a major key—​not necessarily the parallel major—​at the 40 Huebner, Les opéras de Verdi, 185–​99 and passim. 41 Anselm Gerhard comments on Pagannone’s terminology in “Der Primat der Melodie. Überlegungen zur Analyse des musikalischen Details in Verdis Opern,” Die Musikforschung 59 (2006): 311–​27; 311–​12. 42 Pagannone, “Mobilità strutturale della lyric form,” 4–​5. Pagannone credits “anapestic rhythm” as a formal concept to Scott Balthazar, “Rossini and the Development of Mid-​Century Lyric Form,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 41 (1988): 102–​25; 106. 43 Meyer, “A Pride of Prejudices: or, Delight in Diversity,” Music Theory Spectrum 13 (1991): 241–​ 51; 250. 44 But see Áine Heneghan, “Schoenberg’s Sentence,” Music Theory Spectrum 40 (2018): 179–​207. Heneghan shows that what Caplin calls a “sentence” was for Schoenberg merely one type of sentence (Satz); the “period” was the other. As Heneghan puts it, “sentence” for Schoenberg represented a genus, “period” a species.

  Musical Form  T  167 beginning of what should be its closing phrase. The major-​mode phrase, in turn, exceeds the typical proportions of a closing phrase and turns into a full-​blown sentence. The overall scheme resembles what Julian Budden has called the “minor-​ major romanza,” whose prototype, according to Budden, is the aria “Robert, toi que j’aime” from Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831). Both Pagannone’s and Huebner’s examples come from Verdi’s Il trovatore, which was composed at a time when Verdi’s style was especially close to Meyerbeer’s.45 I will omit discussion of Pagannone’s example, Manrico’s aria “Ah sì, ben mio,” to focus on Huebner’s analysis of Leonora’s “Tacea la notte,” which he treats in both of his studies of lyric form. The more recent of Huebner’s analyses is reproduced in example 5.10. I have added letter names for the notes of Verdi’s bass line, although these are implied by Huebner’s Roman numerals. Verdi’s use of the “economical” principle in phrases 1–​2 avoids closure in m. 8 and propels the music toward the half cadence, with fermata, in m. 12. The B phrase, mm. 9–​12, is a classic Monte, which continues the motive of mm. 7–​8 through melodic and harmonic sequence; the bass ascends chromatically from C♭ to E♭ at a rate of one note per measure. The half cadence in m. 12 is the goal and strongest punctuation of the initial three-​phrase group. This twelve-​measure opening unit makes it less surprising that what follows is not a four-​measure closing phrase but a sentence of fifteen measures, subdivided 4 +​4 +​7. Huebner’s discussion of the aria extends for two and a half pages and concludes that the aria exhibits a large binary form, with m. 12 as its dividing point (I agree). The prototypical lyric form also falls into two halves, but its dividing point precedes the B phrase rather than following it as here.

Codas As noted earlier, Italian lyric forms tend to differ from their German counterparts in being more end-​ weighted: the symmetry of an AABA form is usually counterbalanced by placing the melodic climax in the closing phrase. This tendency toward end-​weight is still more apparent in the enormous importance assumed, in many cases, by the coda. Far from being an optional appendage to the form, the coda often forms the telos of an entire movement, whether or not that movement is in lyric form. This is especially true of slow movements, where the coda often contains the most memorable music. In extreme cases, a coda may be as long or longer than the form to which it is appended. A special feature of primo ottocento opera, found mostly in slow movements, is the double coda, a term that was introduced into opera analysis by Daniil Zavlunov.46 A double coda follows the conclusion of a lyric form or other small form. It begins with a phrase not heard before; this phrase ends with a PAC. The phrase is repeated, leading to another PAC. The second PAC may be more

45 The stylistic relation between Meyerbeer and Verdi is discussed in c­ hapters 12–​14. 46 Zavlunov, “M. I. Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar,” 29–​31.

168  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 5.10.  Huebner’s analysis of Verdi, “Tacea la notte” (Il trovatore)*

* from Steven Huebner, Les opéras de Verdi. Éléments d’un langage musico-​dramatique. Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2017. Example 3.2, p. 167. This excerpt has been reproduced by permission of Copibec. drawn-​out than the first, and it is frequently embellished with a cadenza. A few measures of tonic harmony, tonic pedal, or tonic prolongation end the movement. A movement of the type just described is end-​weighted on no fewer than four levels: (1) the form’s closing phrase includes the melodic climax and the most emphatic cadence; (2) a double coda, featuring a new and memorable melody, fortifies closure with additional PACs; (3) the final PAC of the double coda is expanded and enhanced with a cadenza; and (4) a tonic-​affirming postlude provides further closural weight.

  Musical Form  T  169 Basevi describes a lyric form with double coda in his essay on Verdi’s I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843). Example 5.11 shows the melody of Pagano’s aria an octave higher than it sounds. Here is Basevi’s description: As to form, this andante has one of the most common and simple: a first period of eight measures in two phrases, a second of four measures [he notes the distant key, G minor], and a repetition of the second phrase of the first period followed by another period as an appendix [appendice] and then immediately by the cadence [cadenza].47

Example 5.11.  Verdi, I Lombardi, act 1, Aria Pagano, primo tempo

47 Basevi, The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, 31 (emphasis in original).

170  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 5.11.  Continued

Basevi does not define “period,” but he was probably familiar with Reicha’s definition of a period as “a musical thought that ends with a perfect cadence.”48 Like Reicha, Basevi does not require that a period contain more than one phrase. Thus he describes phrase 3 of example 5.11 as a “period” even though it is only four measures long. Analyzing a similar lyric form from I due Foscari, Basevi adds this observation: “Note that when the first period of a melody is beautiful, Verdi very shrewdly follows it with a little four-​measure period, in order to return quickly to the first.”49 From the perspective of the lyric form, the “little four-​measure period” in example 5.11 is a B phrase, or contrasting middle, in the shape of a Ponte: a repeated i–​V–​i progression in the dominant minor (G minor) that harmonizes the three-​note descent B♭–​A–​G in each of two subphrases. At the last moment, g:i is transformed into C:V7 to prepare phrase 4, which is an unmodified return of phrase 2.50 Basevi refers to Verdi’s double coda not only as a period but also as an appendix, a term used by Heinrich Koch to describe, among other things, a “clarifying period” that follows the final cadence of a “main period.”51

48 Reicha, Traité de haute composition musicale, 2 vols. (Paris, 1824–​1826), 2:234 (“une période est un sens musical terminé par une cadence parfaite”). A longer version of this definition appears in Reicha, Treatise on Melody, 16. 49 Basevi, 65. The movement is the primo tempo of Lucrezia’s cavatina. 50 The use of exact rather than modified return may relate to the fact that F4, Pagano’s highest pitch in the opera, has already appeared in phrase 2. 51 Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3:304–​ 5 and 366; his terms are Anhang, Nebenperiode, and erklärende Periode. In the first passage cited, Koch treats the “clarifying period” as something separate from, though subordinate to, the “main period.” Elsewhere he seems to include the clarifying period as part of the main period.

  Musical Form  T  171 Basevi is unlikely to have read Koch, but their concepts of “appendix” are similar. In the double coda of example 5.11, the bass approaches the cadential dominant differently each time—​first through a partly chromatic descent from the tonic (mm. 20–​21), then through a more disjunct approach involving vi and IV (mm. 24–​25). Both bass progressions are directed toward V. A strongly driving bass line is characteristic of double codas as their cadences are approached. Also characteristic is a rather mechanical alternation of tonic and dominant harmonies at phrase beginnings; this sets the drive to the cadence into relief. Gossett’s term “holding pattern” seems appropriate in this context.52 In a well-​known essay, Joseph Kerman and Thomas S. Grey adopt Julian Budden’s term groundswell to describe a pattern used by Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi near the ends of certain slow movements in finales and other large ensembles.53 Some of their examples are very famous: the finale ultimo in Bellini’s Norma; the sextet in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor; the quartet in Verdi’s Rigoletto. The authors describe these passages as constituting “cadential periods.” They are, in fact, double codas, inflated sonically to create an effect of catharsis or ecstasy. Kerman and Grey separate the groundswell into a series of phases: (1) a regular alternation of tonic and dominant harmonies . . .; (2) a contrasting, tension-​building phrase . . . involving sequential harmonic progressions with rising treble and bass lines; (3) a grandiose cadential descent . . .; (4) the repetition of the whole series for an added sense of weight and expansiveness.54

The climax comes, always on a downbeat, between phases (2) and (3), on either an arrival six-​four (Robert Hatten’s term)55 or a root-​position tonic that has been reached through sequential ascent. In some cases, including the Norma finale, the climax is marked by a crash of cymbals. Double codas are rare in instrumental music; when they do appear, the scent of the opera house is strong. In an essay on Chopin’s early Nocturne in E♭ Major (op. 9, no. 2), John Rink argues that the double coda, from m. 25 to the end, is the telos of that piece (he uses neither of these terms). In his Schenkerian reading, Rink places the structural cadence in the coda, not at the end of the nocturne’s rondo-​like form.56

52 Gossett, Anna Bolena, 39–​40 and passim. See also David Gable, “Holding Pattern and Groundswell: Verdi’s Mimesis of the Lyric,” Verdi Forum 28, no. 4 (2001): 21–​31. 53 Joseph Kerman and Thomas S. Grey, “Verdi’s ‘Groundswells’: Surveying an Operatic Convention,” in Analyzing Opera, ed. Abbate and Parker, 153–​79. 54 “Verdi’s ‘Groundswells’,” 155. 55 Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 15 and passim. 56 John Rink, “‘Structural Momentum’ and Closure in Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2,” in Schenker Studies 2, ed. Carl Schachter and Hedi Siegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 109–​26.

172  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

Multi-​Movement Forms The standard forms of complete numbers in primo ottocento opera have, if anything, been more thoroughly discussed than lyric form. A good place to start is Scott Balthazar’s essay “The Forms of Set Pieces” in The Cambridge Companion to Verdi.57 For those who read French, the chapter on form in Steven Huebner’s Les opéras de Verdi is an excellent resource.58 Early eighteenth-​century opere serie consisted mostly of arias, each depicting a single leading emotion: love, rage, etc. Toward the end of the century, two innovations expanded the length and emotional range of some operatic numbers. The two-​tempo aria, in the pattern slow–​fast, became increasingly common, although it was used sparingly and only for an opera’s principal characters. Many such arias carry the title rondò. Among Italian composers, Cimarosa is one who favored the two-​tempo rondò.59 Mozart used the two-​tempo aria in both serious and comic operas, and in German as well as Italian. La clemenza di Tito contains no fewer than four arias that follow this pattern; two are titled rondò. In Mozart’s comic operas, the two-​tempo aria represents an import from opera seria, used for either serious or mock-​serious effect. Donna Anna’s “Non mi dir” (Don Giovanni) represents the former possibility, Fiordiligi’s “Per pietà” (Così fan tutte) the latter. Two-​tempo arias in German usually lack the title rondò. Examples include Konstanze’s “Ach ich liebte” from Die Entführung aus dem Serail and the Queen of the Night’s first aria in Die Zauberflöte, commonly known as “O zittre nicht,” the opening words of the recitative. Another late eighteenth-​ century innovation, the multi-​ tempo finale, represented an import from comic to serious opera. Ending an opera seria with a loosely organized finale in several tempi was already common in the late eighteenth century. The central finale, famous from Le nozze di Figaro (act 2) and Don Giovanni (act 1), was slower to take hold. According to Scott Balthazar, its adoption in serious opera was primarily the work of Simon Mayr, the Bavarian-​born composer who represents the main link between the generations of Cimarosa and Rossini.60

Arias During the half-​century covered in this book, duets and other ensembles gradually assumed a privileged position in relation to arias. Given the continued importance of star singers, however, the aria was never fully dethroned. Because its form is 57 Scott Balthazar, “The Forms of Set Pieces,” in Balthazar, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Verdi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 49–​68. 58 Huebner, Les opéras de Verdi, 233–​330. 59 Examples include “Nel lascarti, o Prence amato” from L’Olimpiade (1784) and “Ah, se t’amo, se t’adoro” from La felicità inaspettata (1788). 60 Balthazar, “Mayr, Rossini, and the Development of the Early Concertato Finale,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 116 (1991): 236–​66.

  Musical Form  T  173 simpler than that of an ensemble, we will begin with it. For the moment we will ignore the introductory recitative and any music that precedes it, such as an orchestral prelude or introductory chorus. In an Italian opera of this period, the first aria sung by any character is called a cavatina or sortita, regardless of its form. The last aria sung by a principal character, especially the prima donna, is called a rondò. If the opera ends with a rondò, the number is called a rondò finale. Most arias sung by principal characters have two tempi, the first slow and the second fast. These tempi may be connected by transitional music, which may be very brief or—​if the chorus or other singers are involved—​rather extended. The slow first tempo goes by several names, but the terms most used at the time were primo tempo (“first movement”) and adagio (regardless of the tempo marking). Later the term cantabile came into use, but recent Anglophone scholarship has frowned on its lack of historical authenticity; Italian scholars continue to use it. Today, North American scholars tend to use the term “slow movement.” The important thing to remember is that the terms are interchangeable. The controversy itself seems to me one of the silliest in recent opera scholarship. The transitional music, which tends to be moderately fast, is called the tempo di mezzo (literally “middle movement”). The final tempo, which is usually the fastest, is called the cabaletta, a term whose origins are incompletely understood. All of these sections, however tightly or loosely constructed, are set to versi lirici—​ verses that are both metered and rhymed. The cabaletta is musically self-​contained, almost always beginning and ending in the same key and exhibiting full closure. The slow movement may or may not be self-​contained: it may end on a dominant harmony, like the slow movements in some of Beethoven’s later piano sonatas. I will refer to each section, or tempo, of an aria as a “movement,” whether it is self-​contained or not.61 A full-​scale aria contains two principal movements, a slow movement and a cabaletta, with an optional tempo di mezzo in between. I say “full-​scale aria” because single-​movement arias, usually slow and often strophic, became increasingly common toward the middle of the century. These one-​movement arias often bear the title romanza; they descend from the strophic romances of eighteenth-​and early nineteenth-​century French opera. Before the slow movement of an aria comes the recitativo or scena. The terms are almost equivalent, but only for a recitative that introduces a number. A recitative that follows a number—​something very common in Rossini’s operas—​is never called a scena. Instead, Rossini uses terms such as dopo l’Aria, dopo il Duetto, or dopo l’Introduzione. Whether it precedes or follows a number, a recitative is set to versi sciolti. During the French occupation of Naples, Neapolitan theaters decreed that all recitatives in serious opera would be orchestrally accompanied in the French manner, relegating recitativo secco to comic opera.62 Mayr and Rossini were among

61 See the discussion of this issue in Huebner, Les opéras de Verdi, 240–​42. 62 Gossett, Divas and Scholars, 247–​48.

174  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 5.12.  Rossini, Semiramide, act 1, Coro e Cavatina Semiramide, mm. 59–​69

the first to put the new rule into practice. Rossini never reverted to recitativo secco in a serious opera, even when writing for other cities. The slow movement of an aria by Bellini, Donizetti, or the young Verdi tends to be cast as a lyric form with coda. Slow movements in Rossini’s arias are less predictable; lyric form is the exception rather than the rule.63 Especially characteristic is the style that Friedrich Lippmann has termed open melody, which is illustrated by example 5.12. In this aria opening (which follows an introductory 63 A clear example of lyric form in the first movement of a Rossini aria is Otello’s cavatina in Otello. This is not a slow movement, however, but a Vivace marziale that precedes the slow movement. As Otello’s first appearance in the opera, the Vivace marziale corresponds dramatically to the “Esultate!” in Verdi’s Otello.

  Musical Form  T  175 chorus), each of three settenari tronchi is set to two measures of music, creating a six-​measure phrase. Orchestral punctuation is sparse and chordal, as in a recitative. Next comes a regular phrase of four measures, setting two further settenari tronchi. A rhythmically steady accompaniment begins shortly after the excerpt shown; phrases become increasingly symmetrical. The progression from partial to full regularity is typical of Rossini’s aria slow movements, although the recitative-​like texture seen here is not always used. The form of a cabaletta was standardized early in the century, and it rarely varied. A self-​contained small form, often a lyric form, is sung twice to the same text. The second statement was ornamented at the singer’s discretion; usually these ornaments were not written into the score. Between the two statements comes a passage known as the ritornello, even if it is heard nowhere else. Other characters (pertichini) or the chorus might participate in the ritornello, but the main musical substance lies in the orchestra. The ritornello of a cabaletta is one of two situations in which Rossini habitually employs a crescendo; the other is the closing group of the overture, if the opera has one. The cabaletta ends with a coda, which features additional vocal virtuosity and tends to culminate in what Donizetti termed the felicità felicità felicità cadence: a series of at least three cadential gestures, more or less identical, in which a PAC is evaded repeatedly and is achieved only on the last try. This is the “one more time” technique described by Janet Schmalfeldt.64 Example 5.13, from Rossini’s La donna del lago, shows the first statement of the cabaletta from Malcom’s entrance aria; bass notes are indicated with scale-​degree numbers. This cabaletta exemplifies a distinctly Rossinian variant of lyric form. The text comprises eight quinari doppi, a sestet plus a couplet, but the rhyme scheme often suggests simple quinari, and the main body of the cabaletta sets only the sestet; the couplet is reserved for the ritornello and coda. Oh quante lagrime /​finor versai, lungi languendo /​da’ tuoi bei rai! Ogn’altro oggetto /​è a me funesto; tutto è imperfetto, /​tutto detesto; di luce il cielo /​no, più non brilla, più non sfavilla /​astro per me. [Cara! tu sola /​mi dai la calma, tu rendi all’alma /​grata mercé!]

The opening period ends with a PAC in the mediant, G♯ minor (m. 110). Modulating to iii in a major key occurs frequently in Italian music of the primo ottocento; we will return to this point in ­chapter 6.65 Following the four-​measure B

64 Schmalfeldt, “Cadential Processes.” See also Giorgio Pagannone, “Tra ‘Cadenze felicità felicità felicità’ e ‘Melodie lunghe lunghe lunghe’: Di una tecnica cadenzale nel melodramma del primo Ottocento,” Il Saggiatore musicale 4 (1997): 53–​86. Donizetti’s reference to the felicità cadence occurs in an often-​quoted letter to Simon Mayr; see William Ashbrook, Donizetti and His Operas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 141–​42. 65 Carl Schachter discusses examples by Mendelssohn and Chopin in “Chopin’s Mazurka op. 59, no. 2: A Tribute to Mendelssohn?” in New Horizons in Schenkerian Research, ed. Allen Cadwallader, Karen Bottge, and Oliver Schwab-​Felisch (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2022), 73–​83.

Example 5.13.  Rossini, La donna del lago, act 1, Cavatina Malcom, mm. 102–​22

  Musical Form  T  177 phrase, a Ponte, the entire opening period is recapitulated to different words; its last phrase is recomposed to end in E major. Because the opening period sets lines 1–​4 and the recapitulation sets lines 5–​6 (the same lines used for the B phrase), the recapitulation must consume its text more slowly. Its first two measures, 115–​16, are played by woodwinds, the voice joining for the phrase’s second half, so the phrase sets one line instead of two. The closing phrase, mm. 119–​22, is extended textually by repeating words and by interpolating the word “no.” Owing to the full recapitulation, the lyric form comprises five phrases rather than four.

Duets Abramo Basevi, whom we have already encountered in these pages, wrote of a one-​movement duet in Verdi’s Rigoletto that it does not conform to “the usual form of duets”—​in Italian, la solita forma de’ duetti. That form, Basevi continued, consists of a tempo d’attacco, an adagio, a tempo di mezzo, and a cabaletta.66 The last three of these coincide with the movements of an aria. Only the tempo d’attacco is specific to duets and other ensemble numbers. As Huebner and others have noted, Basevi is the only nineteenth-​century writer to use the term tempo d’attacco; his Italian contemporaries generally speak of the primo tempo (“first movement”). But primo tempo describes ordinal position only: it refers to the first movement of any number, including the slow first movement of an aria. For this reason, opera scholars have found it convenient to adopt Basevi’s term, giving it a more specific meaning than Basevi may have intended. In a pioneering study, Philip Gossett grouped the four obligatory movements of a Rossini finale into two pairs. (Finales and duets share the same four-​movement core, but a finale often adds one or more extra movements.) According to Gossett, the tempo d’attacco and tempo di mezzo are “kinetic” movements: “action takes place in them or emotional positions are developed.” The adagio and cabaletta are “static” movements, in which “emotions or situations are contemplated.”67 The two “static” movements correspond dramaturgically to the Metastasian aria, in which time and action stop while emotion is expressed. It is in its “kinetic” movements that nineteenth-​century melodramma most clearly separates itself from eighteenth-​ century opera seria. Of the four movements of la solita forma, the tempo d’attacco changed more than any other during the period covered by this book. A few things about it do not change. The tempo is moderately fast, somewhere between Allegro moderato and Allegro. The meter signature is almost always C (). Also unchanging is the movement’s “kinetic” function. The tempo d’attacco establishes the fundamental 66 Basevi, Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi, 191; The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, 167. 67 Gossett, “The candeur virginale of Tancredi,” The Musical Times 112 (1971): 326–​29; 327.

178  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera relation between the two characters, which in some respect is usually one of conflict, even if the characters are lovers, spouses, or friends. A Rossinian tempo d’attacco begins with two lengthy solo statements, one for each character. Statement and response are closely parallel musically, and each ends with an emphatic PAC. Depending on the vocal ranges of the singers, the keys of the two cadences may differ: often the first PAC is in the tonic, the second in the dominant. A more freely structured passage of dialogue follows. As a whole, the tempo d’attacco is harmonically open-​ended: it ends either on the dominant of some key or on the tonic of the following slow movement, whose key differs from that in which the tempo d’attacco began. With few exceptions, the slow movement lies to the flat side of the duet’s opening key, resembling in that respect the slow movement of a Classical symphony. Later composers abandoned Rossini’s parallel statements and let dialogue occupy the entire tempo d’attacco. One way of doing this was to employ the texture that Basevi called parlante armonico, in which the orchestra carries the melodic line and the voices declaim above it.68 This is the texture of the Rigoletto–​ Sparafucile duet that stimulated Basevi to write of “the usual form of duets.” The texture of that one-​movement duet suggests a tempo d’attacco, but its form—​a simple lyric form with double coda—​suggests a slow movement. After Rossini’s generation, lyric form came to be favored for slow movements. If the characters express agreement by this point in the duet, each may sing the entire lyric form in turn, followed by a coda in which they sing together in parallel thirds or sixths; or, to express even closer agreement, they may sing together from the outset. In cases of continued conflict, the second character may reply to the first with a contrasting or “dissimilar” response, as Julian Budden has termed it (see Elvira’s response to Carlo in example 5.4). If the lyric form has a coda, double or otherwise, it is delayed until both characters have sung through the form at least once. The coda often includes a cadenza for both singers. The tempo di mezzo of a duet returns to the approximate speed of the tempo d’attacco, and usually to its  meter signature. It may make explicit reference to the music of the tempo d’attacco, as though dramatic time has restarted after being suspended for the slow movement. In most cases, the tempo di mezzo is the duet’s most loosely organized movement musically. Lengthy statements by individual characters are rare. As in an aria, the dramatic function of the tempo di mezzo is often to announce a change of dramatic circumstance, one sufficiently stirring to motivate the cabaletta. Parlante texture may be used, or the voices may lead the texture with a sporadic and fractured type of melody that Italian authors term canto spezzato.69 Duet cabalettas in lyric form resemble slow movements in that the complete form might be sung once, twice, or three times, depending on the pattern of solo versus a due singing. If the lyric form is sung twice, a ritornello separates the statements. If it is sung three times, it is sung once by each character in turn; a 68 If the voices frequently double the orchestral melody, Basevi speaks of parlante melodico. 69 Basevi uses this term infrequently, and only for slow-​tempo music in which a singer’s melody is interrupted with frequent rests. That the term has no relation to tempo is demonstrated by Asioli, who uses it to describe a passage by Paisiello in Presto tempo (Il maestro di composizione, 3:66).

  Musical Form  T  179 ritornello separates these twin statements from a final statement a due.70 A coda almost always appears, often with cadential repetitions of the felicità felicità felicità type. Trios and quartets are shaped much like duets. The nomenclature changes: if there are three or more characters, the last movement is usually called “stretta” rather than “cabaletta.” Confusingly, the same term is applied to a passage in faster tempo at the end of any number—​aria, duet, finale, etc. The final measures of Bellini’s Norma, marked Allegro agitato assai, constitute a stretta in this latter sense. A weakness of Rossini’s duets is the fact that three of its four movements—​ tempo d’attacco, slow movement, and cabaletta—​ tend to begin with parallel statements of a complete structure, ending each statement with a PAC. The monotony of this pattern was eased by later changes to the tempo d’attacco, described above, which helped to render a kinetic movement more kinetic. Parallel solo statements were then reserved for the two static movements, the slow movement and cabaletta.

Finales It is thought that Basevi’s term tempo d’attacco refers to the fact that this movement “attaches” the scena to the duet proper. The Italian verb attaccare also means to begin something, so in this sense too, tempo d’attacco has the same meaning as primo tempo. In a central finale, however, the movement that corresponds to the tempo d’attacco of a duet rarely comes first: it is preceded by one or more movements, one of them typically a chorus. The term is so useful as the designation of a generic movement-​type that scholars continue to use it, regardless of the movement’s position within a finale, introduzione, or other large-​scale ensemble. As stated earlier, the term tempo d’attacco implies a characteristic tempo marking (Allegro), meter signature (C), dramatic quality (kinetic), harmonic structure (open-​ended), and texture (parlante, especially after 1830). In a finale, the central slow movement is often referred to as the concertato, largo concertato, or pezzo concertato. The last term means “concerted piece,” and it is probably an adaptation of the French term morceau d’ensemble. A characteristic way to begin a concertato is with what is termed a pseudo-​canon, in which a self-​ contained melody of four or eight measures is stated by each of the main characters in turn; the vocal texture thickens with each new entrance. The epithet “pseudo-​” is used because only the initial four-​or eight-​measure melody is imitated by subsequent voices. A concertato often includes the chorus in a supportive role. The act 1 finale of Rossini’s Otello (1816) is diagrammed in table 5.1. The principal key is C major. The first movement, a chorus, follows a pattern identified by Gossett for a Rossini introduzione: a lengthy orchestral prelude is repeated with voices, often (as here) in expanded form.71 The tempo d’attacco begins in the

70 Owing to the difference in tempo, three complete statements of a lyric form are more likely to appear in a cabaletta than in a slow movement. 71 Gossett, “Rossini and the Conventions of Composition,” Acta musicologica 42 (1970): 48–​58.

180  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 5.1. Rossini, Otello, act 1, Finale 1. Coro (Maestoso, ): C major Recitativo: C→F:V7

2. Tempo d’attacco (Allegro, ): Begins with parallel statements, each ca. 30 measures; kinetic/​modulating (F→g:HC) Elmiro: F→F:PAC

Rodrigo: F→C:PAC Desdemona: C→B♭:PAC

Dialogue: B♭, through extensive modulations, to g:HC

3. Concertato 1 (Andante, ): B♭ major, pseudo-​canon (on an 8-​measure theme) Rodrigo: B♭→B♭:PAC Elmiro: B♭→g:PAC

Desdemona: B♭→B♭:PAC

Double coda (2 × 8 measures), followed by tonic pedal

4. Tempo di mezzo (Allegro maestoso, ): Kinetic/​modulating (D→a♭:HC)

5. Concertato 2 (Maestoso, ): A♭ major, pseudo-​canon (on a 4-​measure theme) Otello: A♭→A♭:IAC

Rodrigo: A♭→c:PAC

Desdemona: A♭→A♭:PAC

Tutti: A♭→A♭:HC (contrasting middle) Tutti: A♭→A♭:PAC (closing phrase)

Middle and closing phrases repeated Coda Postlude→modulating transition (5 measures): A♭→C:V7 6. Stretta (Allegro, ): C major

Introductory passage (10 measures) Large parallel period: Grand antecedent (C→C:HC) followed by grand consequent (C→C:PAC) Double coda (2 × 10 measures), followed by additional cadences

subdominant key, F major, and modulates further to the flat side. There are two concertati, both in keys well to the flat side of C major. The strongest punctuation in the finale occurs at the end of the first concertato: silence (a rest with fermata) separates the B♭-​major end of this movement from the D-​major beginning of the

  Musical Form  T  181

tempo di mezzo. The second concertato, in A♭ major, achieves full closure in this key, but a modulating orchestral transition leads without pause to the dominant of C major to prepare the stretta. Many features of this finale are found, in larger form, in the central finale of Rossini’s Semiramide, which will be analyzed in ­chapter 7. Harold Powers has written of Verdi finales that omit a formal stretta, ending instead with loosely structured fast-​tempo music after a formally organized concertato. As the earliest example, he cites the act 1 finale in Luisa Miller (1849): The Act I ending of Luisa Miller is indeed nothing like a conventional stretta, which (among other things) would have been a static set piece. There is an operatic model for it, however: it is very much like a conventional Tempo di mezzo. There is a sequential set of impassioned challenge and response phrases alternating with orchestral flourishes, a passage in parlante texture over a developed orchestral motivo on a walking bass, and a final short tutti outburst. This would have been a splendid preparatory Tempo di mezzo for a stretta had there been one, and for convenience we might as well continue with the term, but what it prepares is not a stretta but an unexpected fast curtain.72

In fact, Verdi instructed his librettist, Cammarano, to omit a stretta from this finale.73 Yet Verdi does suggest at one point that a stretta has begun (example 5.14). After four measures on the dominant of E minor, Rodolfo launches into what seems to be a stretta, beginning with parallel phrases of the “economical” type. Phrases 1–​2 set the first half of a double quatrain: Rodolfo: Tutto tentai, non restami   che un infernal consiglio . . .   se crudo, inesorabile   tu rimarrai col figlio. Trema! svelato agli uomini   sarà dal labbro mio   come giungesti ad essere   Conte di Walter! Walter:    Dio! Rodolfo . . . m’odi . . . arrestati . . .   costei lasciate, è libera! Luisa, chorus, etc.: Fia ver! Pietoso ciel!

Each of the phrases is five measures long rather than four, because the first syllable in each couplet is lengthened. Rodolfo’s second quatrain begins with a chromatic ascent in the vocal line, harmonized in part by 64 chords and evoking a latter-​day Monte. This ascent, plus

Harold S. Powers, “‘La solita forma’ and ‘The Uses of Convention’,” Acta musicologica 59 (1987): 65–​90; 88–​89. 73 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:422, quoted in Powers, “ ‘La solita forma’,” 88. 72

Example 5.14.  Verdi, Luisa Miller, act 1, Finale, mm. 375–​96 (accompaniment simplified)

  Musical Form  T  183 the initial grouping into two-​measure units (mm. 385–​86 and 387–​88), suggests the B phrase in a lyric form. Any sense of a tight-​knit form evaporates, however, when Rodolfo threatens to reveal his father’s darkest secret: how he became Count Walter. The end of the double quatrain is treated as a new beginning: Walter’s triple exclamation “Dio! Rodolfo! m’odi!” is set to three statements of the minor third C♮–​A. The key has changed to A major, and a final cadence in that key is reached just before the curtain.

Hard Cases The limited scope of this chapter does not permit us to examine borderline cases of la solita forma. A few have been debated in the literature, none more than the Violetta–​Germont duet in act 2 of La traviata. It is difficult even to count the movements in this duet; to classify them by genre and formal function is still more daunting. There is an obvious cabaletta at the end (“Morrò!”) and an apparent adagio in the middle (“Dite alla giovine”), although the form of the latter suggests a slow cabaletta in the manner of Donizetti. A brief tempo di mezzo separates these movements; its use of versi sciolti, normally reserved for recitative, is balanced by its musical texture, which is mostly parlante, typical of a tempo di mezzo. That leaves a string of earlier movements, of which there are at least three in contrasting tempi, poetic meters, and musical meters. Powers sweeps them all together into a multi-​movement tempo d’attacco; a simplified version of his reading appears in table 5.2.74 He argues, among other things, that Germont’s Allegro moderato (A♭ major) and Violetta’s Vivacissimo (C minor) descend from the “dissimilar” statement–​response pattern seen earlier in e­xamples 5.3–​5.4 (the Carlo–​Elvira duet in Ernani). Huebner is skeptical of Powers’s analysis, preferring to take the duet’s form as sui generis, inspired by the rapidly shifting power dynamics between Violetta and her lover’s father. All one can say with confidence is that the generic affiliations of the duet’s movements become increasingly conventional as its end approaches. Perhaps that is because Violetta, who begins the duet expressing proud independence, is gradually humbled into self-​sacrifice, the only agency she is permitted to exercise in polite society.

A Note on the Term “Period” Readers will have noticed that “period” has been used in this chapter in more than one way. That is because theorists such as Koch in the late eighteenth century, Reicha and Basevi in the nineteenth, Riemann at the turn of the twentieth, and 74 Powers, “ ‘La solita forma’,” 77–​81; my table 5.2 is based on Powers’s Table III. Huebner’s discussion of the duet appears in Les opéras de Verdi, 312–​20.

184  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 5.2.  Powers’s analysis (simplified) of the Violetta–​Germont duet in La traviata* Movement

Versification

Keys/​harmonies

Tempo/​meter

0. Scena

sciolti

→a→C→a→f/​F→V/​E♭

Allegro; Moderato; Allegro

settenario

A♭

Allegro moderato, 

c→C

Vivacissimo, 

1. Tempo d’attacco sciolti ottonario settenario quinario doppio 2. Andantino

quinario doppio

3. Tempo di mezzo

sciolti

4. Cabaletta

settenario

A♭→V/​c f→A♭→D♭ d♭→V/​e♭

(animando . . .)

Andante piuttosto mosso,  [no change]

E♭

Andantino, 

g→B♭→b♭→ B♭

Allegro moderato, 

e♭→C♭/​B→e→V/​g

Sostenuto, Allegro, 

* adapted from Harold S. Powers, “ ‘La solita forma’ and ‘The Uses of Convention,’ ” Acta musicologica 59, no. 1 (January–​April 1987): 65–​90; Table III, p. 79. Used by permission of the International Musicological Society, publishers of Acta musicologica.

Caplin at the turn of the twenty-​first have used the term differently. (Koch already complains of the multiplicity of definitions in his Musikalisches Lexikon.75) In the remainder of this book, I will use the locution parallel period to denote what Caplin calls simply a “period”: a two-​part structure in which an initial phrase, ending with an HC or IAC, is answered by a second phrase ending with a PAC, and the two phrases begin with the same or very similar music.76 I will employ the unmodified term period much as Reicha did, to denote a passage of music, rarely shorter than eight measures in length, that ends with a perfect authentic cadence. In this broader sense, a parallel period is only one type of period; there are others. An eight-​measure sentence, for example, is a period if it ends with a PAC. This broader definition of “period” corresponds to the word’s meaning in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the meaning that was known to Italian composers of the primo ottocento.77

75 Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt, 1802), 1150. 76 This is a slightly less restrictive definition than I offered in Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music. 77 Basevi’s working definition of “period,” discussed above in relation to example 5.11, is still broader than Reicha’s—​too broad for my purposes.

PART II

Rossini A few decades ago, it was still necessary to advocate strenuously for Rossini’s serious operas; the general consensus was that the composer should have taken Beethoven’s reported advice to stick to opera buffa.1 Advocacy is still necessary, but the need has become less pressing. The way has been paved by the late Philip Gossett; by the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Rossini’s birthplace; by the work of the Fondazione Rossini; and by at least three generations of devoted performers. The coloratura mezzo-​soprano is once again a recognized vocal category, thanks to Marilyn Horne and a series of illustrious successors, including Cecilia Bartoli and Joyce DiDonato. The Rossini tenor, once believed extinct, has been rediscovered, though he remains a rare bird. Scholars such as Gossett, and scholar-​ conductors such as Will Crutchfield, have done much to resurrect the style of Rossinian bel canto, while conductors such as Maurizio Benini infuse Rossini’s orchestra with its intended vitality. Rossini is back. Historical musicologists have been far ahead of music theorists in recognizing Rossini’s significance. It seemed a bit daring to English-​speakers when, in 1989, they opened Carl Dahlhaus’s Nineteenth-​Century Music and read about “the era of Beethoven and Rossini,” resurrecting a bit of nineteenth-​century historiography.2 Today the slogan seems unremarkable. To take Rossini’s compositional technique seriously is a newer development, barely past its infancy. The three chapters in part II are not aimed at investigating Rossini’s compositional training or reconstructing his compositional process; I leave those important tasks to others. Chapter 6 looks at Rossini’s harmony, especially his use of chromatic mediants. Chapter 7 addresses large-​scale structures in serious operas from Otello (1816) to Semiramide (1823). Chapter 8 is unique in this book in its focus on a single opera, Guillaume Tell (1829). 1 Rossini allegedly told the anecdote to Richard Wagner in 1860. See Nicholas Mathew and Benjamin Walton, “Introduction: Pleasure in History,” in The Invention of Beethoven and Rossini, ed. Mathew and Walton, 1–​12; 1–​2. 2 Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-​Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 8 and 57–​58. The phrase originated in Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, Geschichte der europäisch-​abendländischen oder unserer heutigen Musik (Leipzig, 1834). See the chapters by James Hepokoski, James Webster, and Gundula Kreuzer in The Invention of Beethoven and Rossini, ed. Mathew and Walton.

C HA P T E R

Six

Rossini’s Mediants

This chapter explores aspects of Rossini’s harmonic practice during the decade from Tancredi (1813), his first great success, to Semiramide (1823), the last opera he composed for Italy. I focus on mediant relations, both diatonic and chromatic. Although this is primarily a book about serious opera, in this chapter I include examples from one comic opera, Il barbiere di Siviglia. Table 6.1 lists Rossini’s full-​length operas of this decade, organized by year of composition. Rossini’s generic designation for each opera is included, as is the city for which it was composed. Roughly half of the operas were written for Naples, where Rossini lived from 1815 to 1822; others were composed for Venice, Milan, or Rome. The division between comic and serious operas is complicated by the presence of semiserious operas such as La gazza ladra and Matilde di Shabran; I have grouped these with the comic operas. One quickly sees that Rossini was increasingly occupied with serious opera during his Neapolitan years. Also evident is the ambiguity of the terms dramma and melodramma, although the latter would soon become the default term for serious opera in Italian. The table omits Eduardo e Cristina, a pasticcio, although most of Rossini’s operas recycle music from earlier works.1 The term “mediant,” as used in this book, may refer both to mediants in the narrow sense—​triads built on the third degree of a major or minor scale—​and submediants, triads built on the sixth degree. The third and sixth degrees may be borrowed from the opposite (parallel) mode. In this broader sense, “mediant” refers to both diatonic and chromatic triads, and to root relations by both major and minor third. The term is thus roughly equivalent to “third-​relation.”

Diatonic Mediants We begin our exploration of Rossini’s harmony with diatonic mediants in the major mode: iii and vi. When either of these triads, or any non-​tonic triad, is treated as a local tonic, I will often add the subscript T (for “tonicized”) to the Roman numeral, following the practice of James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy.2 iiiT refers to the region, or key area, of the diatonic minor mediant—​for example, 1 On the reuse of music from earlier Rossini operas in later ones and the problems that this reuse poses for the work-​concept, see the Introduction. 2 Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-​ Eighteenth-​Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 24 and 198. The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0007

188  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 6.1.  Rossini’s operas, 1813–​1823 (N =​Naples, V =​Venice, M =​Milan, R =​Rome) Comic and semiserious

Serious

L’Italiana in Algeri (dramma giocoso), 1813 (V)

Tancredi (melodramma eroico), 1813 (V)

Il Turco in Italia (dramma buffo), 1814 (M) Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (dramma), 1815 (N) Torvaldo e Dorliska (dramma semiserio), 1815 (R) Il barbiere di Siviglia (commedia), 1816 (R) La gazzetta (dramma), 1816 (N)

Otello (dramma), 1816 (N)

La Cenerentola (dramma giocoso), 1817 (R) La gazza ladra (melodramma), 1817 (M)

Armida (dramma), 1817 (N) Adelaide di Borgogna (dramma), 1817 (R) Mosè in Egitto (azione tragico-​sacra), 1818 (N) Ricciardo e Zoraide (dramma), 1818 (N) Ermione (azione tragica), 1819 (N) La donna del lago (melodramma), 1819 (N) Bianca e Falliero (melodramma), 1819 (M) Maometto secondo (dramma), 1820 (N)

Matilde di Shabran (dramma giocoso), 1821 (R) Zelmira (dramma), 1822 (N) Semiramide (melodramma tragico), 1823 (V)

E minor within a piece in C major. viT refers to the region, or key area, of the diatonic submediant (the relative minor). The terms “region” and “key area” are equivalent.3 Where I wish to emphasize that a harmony is not tonicized, I will use the subscript A (for “active”), again following Hepokoski and Darcy. The The terms are equivalent because both derive from the German Region, which was introduced into harmonic theory by Arnold Schoenberg. Region appears in Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre (Vienna, 1911), but its locus classicus is Structural Functions of Harmony, ed. Leonard Stein (New York: W. W. Norton, 1954). “Key area” was introduced in its current meaning by Schoenberg’s pupil Leonard Ratner in “Harmonic Aspects of Classic Form,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 2 (1949): 159–​68. The term had been used earlier, but with a somewhat different meaning, by N. Lindsay Norden in “A New Theory of Untempered Music,” Musical Quarterly 22 (1936): 217–​33. 3

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  189 Example 6.1.  Schenker, Der freie Satz, Fig. 14, 1–​4

distinction is especially important where the V harmony is concerned. The distinction between VT (the key of the major dominant) and VA (a major dominant harmony, either V or V7, within some key) is precisely equivalent to Tovey’s distinction between being “in the dominant” and being “on the dominant.”4 In Riemann’s system of functions, iii and vi can represent either of two functions, because each shares two tones with two different primary triads. iii shares two tones with I and two with V, so it can substitute for, and function as, either T or D. vi shares two tones with I and two with IV, so it can represent either T or S. In Schenker’s Free Composition, root-​position iii is shown to be interchangeable with both III♯ and I6, two other chords that have 3̂ as their bass note, whenever the bass ascends from I to V by any combination of steps and leaps; see example 6.1. The Schenker-​oriented textbook Harmony and Voice Leading, by Edward Aldwell and Carl Schachter, also shows iii substituting for I6 in certain contexts. The same book (like many others) shows how iii6, or an

Tovey makes this distinction in several books, including Musical Articles from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (London: Oxford University Press, 1944); rept. 1957 as The Forms of Music. 4

190  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera apparent iii6, may take the place of a root-​position V, especially in a perfect authentic cadence.5 In music of the early eighteenth century, iiiT and viT fulfill a role that becomes less common in later music: a section that ends with full closure in iiiT or viT may proceed directly to a restatement of the main theme in the tonic. Returning to the tonic in this way is especially frequent in ritornello and da capo forms. Major-​key arias with a middle section in viT are so common that it would be superfluous to offer examples. Sonata forms from the mid-​eighteenth century frequently end the main body of the development section with a vi:PAC (a PAC in viT); the recapitulation may follow immediately.6 As the century progressed, it became customary to add a retransition that led to the tonic by means of its dominant seventh, so that viT and I were separated.7 Direct motion from a iii:PAC to a tonic-​key ritornello occurs in the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 in F Major (example 6.2). The ritornello theme, which is stated in unison by the full ensemble, emphasizes A and C, the two notes common to iii and I. Formal closes earlier in the movement had followed the “solar” arrangement of keys typical of late Baroque music: PACs occur successively in I, V, vi, IV, ii, iii, and I. This is a textbook application of the “solar” principle: all major and minor triads diatonic to the main key appear as local tonics. V is used to depart from I but not to return to it.8

The Mediant Key in Major (iiiT) Rossini employs iiiT in one highly characteristic way: as the harmonic goal of an opening period, often (but not necessarily) a parallel period.9 This use of iiiT appears mostly in arias. When an opening period ends with a iii:PAC, the next period usually begins on V7, perhaps alternating with I. This pattern is especially frequent in Semiramide. Example 6.3 shows the opening of the slow movement of Arsace’s cavatina. As is typical, the melody ascends from 3̂ to 4̂ as iiiT moves to V7 (mm. 106–​7). A similar example, also for a contralto, is the cabaletta of Malcom’s cavatina from La donna del lago (­example 5.13, mm. 110–​11). In Almaviva’s cavatina in Il barbiere di Siviglia—​the second movement of that opera’s introduzione—​V7 is represented only in the vocal line (m. 120), which

Aldwell and Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading, 5th ed., 272 and 335–​36. See also Eytan Agmon, “Functional Harmony Revisited: A Prototype-​Theoretic Approach,” Music Theory Spectrum 17 (1995): 196–​214. 6 Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, 203. 7 Koch regarded a vi:PAC or iii:PAC as normal for the end of the “second main period” (our “development section”), but he states that this is typically followed by an “appendix” that leads to VA of the principal key. Koch, Introductory Essay on Composition, 200–​201 and 237–​39. 8 On “solar” vs. “polar” conceptions of tonality see Ratner, Classic Music, 48–​51. 9 The term “period” is discussed in ­chapter 5. 5

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  191 Example 6.2.  J. S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto no. 2, first movement, mm. 99–​104

̂ 4.̂ In the orchestra, iiiT is includes the characteristic ascending semitone, 3– followed by I, bringing the two triads into closer relation (example 6.4). In ­examples 6.3–​6.4, iii might be regarded, despite its tonicization, as an intermediate harmony between I and V7, following the type of bass pattern shown in example 6.1. The same interpretation cannot be applied to an earlier example, 4.20a. This is a relatively rare case in which Rossini directly juxtaposes a iii:PAC with a fresh start on I.10 The opening period is sixteen measures long, mm. 152–​67, with a I:HC marking the midpoint. The dyad B4–​D5 in the vocal lines, first heard in m. 153, returns in m. 165, where the key has changed to B minor; one measure later, at the iii:PAC, the third is inverted to the sixth D4–​B4. The next section begins at m. 168 with the dyad restored to its original position. This dyad continues to be emphasized to the end of the movement. B and D are the two pitch classes common to G:I and G:iii. Example 6.5 offers a schematic reduction in two stages. The first stage highlights the B–​D dyad and the bass notes that accompany it. The second, more reduced stage includes only local tonics and leaves the dyad in its original register. In Riemann’s terms, the iii in example 6.5b may be regarded as the tonic’s Leittonwechselklang 10 Other examples occur in interior movements of first-​act finales in Otello (Allegro maestoso, D major) and La gazza ladra (Allegro, E♭ major).

192  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 6.3.  Rossini, Semiramide, act 1, Cavatina Arsace, mm. 99–​107

because G moves to its leading tone and back again. Alternatively, iii could be regarded as G major’s Dominantparallel (relative minor to the dominant), because the leading tone is usually associated with dominant function. A Schenkerian reading would resemble the first interpretation, because the tonic affiliation of the bass’s unfolded third, G–​B–​G, would be emphasized. Rameau would have turned Riemann’s second interpretation on its head: he refers to iiiT not as the relative minor of the dominant but as the (minor) dominant of the relative minor.11 11 Rameau, Code de musique pratique, 148.

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  193 Example 6.4.  Rossini, Il barbiere di Siviglia, act 1, Introduzione, mm. 113–​21

Example 6.5.  Reduction of ­example 4.20a

The Submediant Key in Major (viT) Direct motion from a vi:PAC to the tonic within a movement is part of Rossini’s musical language, but it is not very common.12 More often there is at least a brief VA, usually in the form of V7, before the tonic returns. One example is the primo 12 Examples include Mosè in Egitto, act 3, finale, mm. 118–​19; and Semiramide, act 1, finale, mm. 126–​27. We will see further examples in ­chapter 7.

194  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 6.6.  Rossini, Otello, act 2, Aria Rodrigo, mm. 52–​62

tempo of Rodrigo’s aria in Otello (example 6.6). The first period ends with a vi:PAC in m. 59. A half-​measure of V7 accompanies the upbeat to the next period, which begins in the tonic, E♭ major, with the same melody as mm. 52–​53. The C minor harmony returns in m. 61 as part of a modulation to B♭ major, in which key the movement will end. V of vi is simultaneously III♯ in the home key. Like many of his predecessors, but more frequently, Rossini will lead from a vi:HC directly to I, creating the progression III♯–​I. This progression is a hallmark of primo ottocento opera. It is so common in the music of Rossini and Bellini that a minor-​key half cadence raises uncertainty whether the next phrase will be in the same key or its relative major. Act 3 of Otello, to be examined more closely in the next chapter, is a single number that begins and ends in E♭ major, but there are lengthy passages in other keys, including a two-​movement duet in D for Otello and Desdemona. When E♭ returns in the final scene, it is approached not through its own dominant but by means of a half cadence in C minor (vi:HC). Many similar examples could be given: Rossini often prepares a major key through a half cadence in its relative minor. A special way of mixing a major key with its relative minor is reserved almost exclusively for diegetic songs. A few of these songs, which are always strophic, became very famous in Rossini’s lifetime: Almaviva’s serenade to Rosina in act 1 of

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  195 Example 6.7.  Rossini, Tancredi, act 1, Duetto Amenaide–​Tancredi, mm. 13–​25 (end of the scena and beginning of the tempo d’attacco; vocal lines omitted)

Il barbiere; the Willow Song in act 3 of Otello; and Moses’s prayer in act 3 of Mosè in Egitto.13 These songs all follow a similar pattern. Each strophe begins in a minor key and ends with a solid PAC in the relative (not parallel) major. A brief and less emphatic PAC in the minor key is added as an appendix, whereupon the next strophe begins in the minor. The suffix is never part of the principal vocal line: in Barbiere it is provided by Rosina, in Mosè by the chorus, in Otello by the orchestra. The two relative keys lay almost equal claim to primacy. Only in Mosè in Egitto is the issue finally decided: the last strophe is set entirely in the parallel (not relative) major, so the original tonic prevails: the scheme is g→B♭; (→g) /​g→B♭; (→g) /​g→B♭; (→G) /​G. The semicolons represent closure in the relative major; the slashes represent divisions between strophes. In Barbiere and Otello the song is broken off before it can end; without a final cadence, the issue of the principal key remains unresolved.14 An exceptional mixing of relative keys occurs in a more formal number, the Amenaide–​Tancredi duet in act 1 of Tancredi. The duet is in B♭ major, but its scena ends with a PAC in G minor.15 Example 6.7 begins with the scena’s last eight measures; vocal lines have been omitted. The first five bass notes, B♭–​F♯–​G–​D–​E♭, form a modified romanesca pattern, known to Italian pedagogues as “falling by fourth and rising by step.” The same bass motive opens the tempo d’attacco. The orchestra is initially ambiguous as to key: the motive, which is imitated one measure later by the first violins, continues to suggest G minor, while the 13 The version of act 3 that survives, including the preghiera, stems from an 1819 revival, not the 1818 premiere. The original music to act 3 is lost. 14 See the discussion of the operatic romance in Rothstein, “Common-​Tone Tonality in Italian Romantic Opera.” 15 Tancredi retains the eighteenth-​ century distinction between recitativo secco and recitativo accompagnato; a scena consists of the latter. On Rossini’s abandonment of keyboard-​accompanied recitative in serious operas, see ­chapter 5.

196  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 6.8.  A reduction of the tempo di mezzo

repeated-​note idea in the inner voices favors B♭ major (B♭ is sounded in three registers in mm. 21–​22).16 The arrival on B♭ major in m. 25 confirms B♭ as the main key. As the movement continues, the bass motive appears with some frequency, its F♯ continuing to suggest G minor. Typically for a Rossinian tempo d’attacco, a large period in the tonic is answered by a similar period cadencing in the dominant (VT). Also typical of a tempo d’attacco is the movement’s “open” ending: a half cadence in C minor leads, via a remarkable chromatic sequence, to a slow movement in E♭ major (IVT). The brief tempo di mezzo begins on an E♭-​major chord. The movement’s bass line consists of only six bass notes, E♭–​D–​C–​D–​E♭–​D, outlining a broad half cadence in G minor; example 6.8 provides a reduction. This half cadence is followed immediately by the cabaletta in the main key, B♭ major. As we have seen elsewhere, the progression from vi:HC to the tonic amounts to III♯–​I in the principal key.

Chromatic Mediants Probably the most conspicuous aspect of Rossini’s harmony is his frequent use of chromatic mediants, the focus of David Kopp’s PhD dissertation and, to a slightly lesser extent, his book Chromatic Transformations in Nineteenth-​Century Music.17 For a major tonic, Kopp terms the four chromatic mediants the upper sharp mediant (USM =​III♯), upper flat mediant (UFM =​♭III), lower sharp mediant (LSM =​ VI♯), and lower flat mediant (LFM =​♭VI). All of these are major triads; each has one note in common with the tonic triad. In the key of C major, the chromatic mediants are E major (USM), E♭ major (UFM), A major (LSM), and A♭ major (LFM). Table 6.2 reproduces Kopp’s table. Kopp also defines two mediants that share no notes with a major tonic triad. These he terms disjunct mediants. In C major, they are E♭ minor (upper disjunct mediant) and A♭ minor (lower disjunct mediant). A♭ minor has the special property 16 The repeated-​note motive recalls the overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute (1791), which in turn recalls Clementi’s Piano Sonata in B♭ Major, op. 24, no. 2 (1781). 17 David Kopp, “A Comprehensive Theory of Chromatic Mediant Relations in Mid-​Nineteenth-​ Century Music” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1995); Chromatic Transformations in Nineteenth-​ Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  197 Table 6.2.  Some properties of the four chromatic mediant relations* Mediant

Common tone in tonic triad

Common tone in mediant triad

Interval between roots

Key difference

Diatonic motion

USM

3̂

root

maj 3↑

4♯

semitone; l.t to tonic

UFM

5̂

third

min 3↑

whole tone

LSM

3̂

fifth

min 3↓

3♭

LFM

1̂

third

maj 3↓

4♭

semitone; l.t to LFM

3♯

whole tone

* from David Kopp, Chromatic Transformations in Nineteenth-​ Century Music (Cambridge University Press; ©2002 by David Kopp). Page 14, table 1.2. Reproduced with permission of Cambridge University Press through PLSclear.

of displacing each note of the C major triad by exactly one semitone (C→B, E→E♭, G→A♭) while exhausting the hexatonic collection {B, C, E♭, E, G, A♭}. Within this six-​note collection, the triads C major and A♭ minor form hexatonic poles owing to their lack of intersecting pitch-​class content. A hexatonic collection is also formed by summing the notes of a major tonic triad with those of its USM and LFM: C major, E major, and A♭ major yield the same collection as C major and A♭ minor, if enharmonic equivalence is assumed.18 A celebrated example of a chromatic mediant occurs in the cabaletta “Di tanti palpiti” from Tancredi. Example 6.9 shows the first of the cabaletta’s two statements, minus the orchestral introduction. The key is F major. The cabaletta begins with a parallel period, mm. 86–​93, in which only I and V harmonies are used. The chromatic shift occurs between measures 101 and 102. The move is from C major, acting as F:VA, to A♭ major, with the ascending semitone G–​A♭ in the vocal melody. The semitone is marked crescendo, which suggests that the singer should not breathe here. In retrospect the harmonic motion, VA–​♭IIIT in F major, is heard as III♯–​I in A♭ major, and the melodic ascent is heard as 7̂–1̂ in the latter key. The move to A♭ takes place following the B phrase, a Ponte, in what promises to be a simple lyric form. A return to the F major tonic is expected after m. 101; this return would have begun the cabaletta’s closing phrase. A closing phrase is what we get in mm. 102–​5, but the close is in the wrong key. The text, a quatrain of double quinari, concludes at this point, marking the end of the cabaletta proper. What follows, over a dominant pedal of F minor, is the ritornello that prepares the cabaletta’s second statement (example 6.10). From a harmonic perspective, it

18 Hexatonic relations are extensively explored by Richard Cohn in Audacious Euphony and other writings. See also Philip Ewell, “On Rimsky-​Korsakov’s False (Hexatonic) Progressions.”

198  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 6.9.  Tancredi, act 1, Cavatina Tancredi, mm. 86–​105

is another Ponte. Tancredi sings throughout, using an extra line of text that the librettist Gaetano Rossi provided (whether at his own or Rossini’s initiative is unclear). When the cabaletta is sung a second time, the move to A♭ is replaced by a closing phrase in F major, four measures long and set to a cadenza lunga (example 6.11). Its initial tonic (m. 130) is colored by a minor seventh, acting as V7 of IV.19 An extended coda follows. 19 On the use of V7/​IV as initial tonic in a cadential progression, see Caplin, Classical Form, 26–​29.

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  199 Example 6.10.  The same, mm. 106–​13

Example 6.11.  The same, mm. 126–​33

Chromatic Mediants on a Large Scale With rare exceptions, Rossini sets his slow movements in keys to the flat side of the main tonic. In early operas such as Tancredi this key is often IVT, the diatonic subdominant. Within a few years, however, his preference shifts to the flat chromatic mediants, ♭IIIT and ♭VIT. If a tempo d’attacco ends in the key of the dominant (VT) and the slow movement is set in ♭IIIT, as in the Ninetta–​Fernando duet from La gazza ladra, ♭IIIT has the effect of ♭VIT in relation to VT.20 The modulation, in other words, is to a key a major third lower. 20 The same can be said of A♭ major in example 6.11, although the dominant there is VA, not VT.

200  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 6.3 outlines a few ensembles, listed chronologically. All are in four movements. Included is a duet from Semiramide that uses a sharp rather than a flat chromatic mediant for its slow movement. The tempo di mezzo of an ensemble may return abruptly to the main tonic, as in the Semiramide–​Arsace duet discussed earlier. It may begin in the key in which the slow movement ended. Or it may begin in some other key. Most interesting, perhaps, are those rare cases in which the slow movement is set in ♭VIT and the tempo di mezzo begins either on an active III♯ (III♯A) or in the key of III♯ (III♯T). This pattern occurs twice in Zelmira, including the quintet summarized in table 6.3. The result is a complete cycle of descending major thirds, I–​♭VI–​III♯–​I; the cycle closes with the tonic onset of the stretta. A contemporary Viennese critic, Friedrich August Kanne, noted the presence of enharmonic modulations in Zelmira and complimented Rossini on handling them skillfully.21 Schubert knew Zelmira and admired Rossini’s serious operas.22 His response to Zelmira seems to have been his “Wanderer” Fantasy, D. 760, composed about six months after the opera was performed in Vienna. The fantasy’s four movements trace a cycle of ascending major thirds, C–​E–​A♭–​C, reversing the pattern found in Zelmira.23

Chromatic Miracles in Mosè in Egitto In Naples as elsewhere in Europe, operatic performances were forbidden during Lent; but oratorios were permitted. The Neapolitans took this loophole and created opera sacra, sacred opera—​fully staged operas on religious subjects.24 For the Lenten season of 1818, Rossini wrote what in his letters he referred to as an oratorio. His score, however, calls Mosè in Egitto an azione tragico-​sacra, distinguishing it from a secular tragedy such as Ermione, which Rossini designated azione tragica. (Azione sacra was a traditional Italian term for oratorio.) The tragedy of Mosè is not, of course, the escape of the Hebrews from Egypt; it is the wholly invented love story of Osiride, first-​born son of the Pharaoh, and Elcìa, a young Hebrew woman who ultimately spurns Osiride’s love out of duty to her 21 Excerpts from Kanne’s review are quoted in Michele Leigh Clark, “The Performances and Reception of Rossini’s Operas in Vienna, 1822–​1825” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 2005), 264–​67. 22 See the sources listed in note 50 to Benjamin Walton, “‘More German than Beethoven: Rossini’s Zelmira and Italian Style,” in The Invention of Beethoven and Rossini, ed. Mathew and Walton, 159–​ 77; 176; also table 2 in Peter Branscombe, “Schubert and the Melodrama,” in Schubert Studies: Problems of Style and Chronology, ed. Eva Badura-​ Skoda and Peter Branscombe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 105–​41; 115. Xavier Hascher and Suzannah Clark have also written about the Rossini–​Schubert connection. 23 The second movement of D. 760 begins in C♯ minor and ends in E major. 24 See Howard E. Smither, A History of the Oratorio, Vol. 3: The Oratorio in the Classical Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), Part I (“The Italian Oratorio”).

Table 6.3.  Key schemes of selected ensembles by Rossini Tancredi, No. 5. Duetto Amenaide–​Tancredi. B♭ major.

Tempo d’attacco. B♭→F (I→VT). Transition first to c:VA, then to E♭:I Slow movement: E♭ (IVT)

Tempo di mezzo: E♭→g:VA (=​B♭:III♯) Cabaletta: B♭

Otello, No. 8. Terzetto. C major. Tempo d’attacco: C. Transition to E♭:I

Slow movement: E♭ (♭IIIT). Transition to G:VA

Tempo di mezzo: G→a, ending on a:VA (=​C:III♯) Stretta: C

La gazza ladra, No. 6. Duetto Ninetta–​Fernando. D major. Tempo d’attacco: D→A (I→VT) Slow movement: F (♭IIIT =​ VT:♭VIT) Tempo di mezzo: F→D:VA Cabaletta: D Zelmira, No. 12. Quintetto. C major. Tempo d’attacco: C→c→C. Transition to A♭:I Concertato: A♭ (♭VIT)

Tempo di mezzo: E→e→E (III♯T). Transition to c:VA Stretta: C

Semiramide, No. 8. Duetto Semiramide–​Assur. B♭ major. Tempo d’attacco: B♭. Transition to G:I Slow movement: G→g→G (VI♯T)

Tempo di mezzo: C→C:VA; suddenly E♭ (C:♭IIIT =​ B♭:IVT); then transition to B♭:VA Cabaletta: B♭

202  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 6.12.  Rossini, Mosè in Egitto, Introduzione, mm. 7–​12

people. The opera thus blends a conventional story of star-​crossed lovers with the biblical story of Exodus. The latter story includes miracles, including the ten plagues (the opera shows three) and the parting of the Red Sea. Onstage miracles require miraculous music to accompany them; a classic example is the change from darkness to light in Haydn’s Creation. Haydn’s oratorio was known and admired in Italy, especially in the north, where Rossini was born and educated. Haydn’s “Representation of the Chaos,” the overture to The Creation, is a highly chromatic orchestral piece in C minor. It is little wonder, then, that Rossini wrote chromatic music in C minor for the plague of darkness, the representation of which is heard in the orchestra and “seen” onstage before a note has been sung (example 6.12). The harmony of these half-​dozen measures is based on familiar enharmonic reinterpretations of the diminished and dominant seventh chords: Rossini’s notation carefully distinguishes F♯ from G♭ and A♮ from B♭♭. When Moses appears before Pharaoh and restores the sun’s light to show God’s power, Rossini marks the change with a Haydnesque progression (not shown) from C minor to C major. The passage culminates in a fortissimo choral exclamation, capped by Queen Amaltea’s high C. The opera’s other miracles elicit more daring harmonic effects. The most remarkable occurs in the tempo di mezzo of Elcìa’s aria, the final number of act 2, where Osiride and Moses confront each other before Pharaoh. Osiride moves to strike Moses dead, but a thunderclap is heard and Osiride himself falls dead, a victim of the plague of the first-​born. The music features the progression known in neo-​Riemannian theory as SLIDE and in Russian theory as the common-​third relation, a motion between triads of opposite mode that share the same third.25 In 25 On the common-​third relation see Christopher Mark Segall, “Triadic Music in Twentieth-​Century Russia” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 2013), 80–​121.

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  203 Example 6.13.  Mosè in Egitto, act 2, Aria Elcìa, mm. 64–​73

this case, A minor moves abruptly to A♭ major, with C as the common tone (example 6.13). The main key of the number is E major, so A minor represents iv, A♭ major an enharmonically respelled III♯. From A♭ major, a chromatic sequence ascends to B major (VT), a key that had been left only a little earlier. In the earlier B-​ major passage (example 6.14), Rossini incorporates both III♯ (D♯ major, m. 49) and ♭VI (G major, m. 52) as short-​term goals, respectively vi:HC and I:DC. Notice the juxtaposition of USM and LFM, chromatic mediants related to each other by major third. Other miraculous moments use progressions that, while striking, are more familiar. When Pharaoh calls a halt to the exodus during the finale of act 1, he uses the same progression as Tancredi in “Di tanti palpiti”: a move from F:VA to A♭:I. Immediately after the fortissimo A♭-​major chord, orchestra and chorus in unison intone the line A♭–​E♮–​F–​C–​D♭, a transposition of the melodic sequence heard in the Amenaide–​Tancredi duet, leading to a cadence in A♭. The brief third act is set at the Red Sea. After Moses’s prayer, the most famous piece in the opera, the key changes to C major for the final confrontation. Seeing the Egyptians pursuing them, the Hebrews begin to panic. Moses silences them with a majestic but utterly conventional recitative in C major, ending with the usual V7–​I cadence in the orchestra. He touches the sea with his rod, and E major gushes forth from the orchestra, the chorus, and the other soloists as the waters divide (example 6.15). Ultimately, this E major will resolve to A minor as its dominant, followed by an immediate resumption of C major, an unusually direct juxtaposition of viT with I. The Egyptians drown to orchestral music in C minor,

204  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 6.14.  The same, mm. 44–​52

Example 6.15.  Mosè in Egitto, act 3, mm. 97–​102

the hexatonic pole of E major and the key in which they had lamented the darkness in act 1. Once the scene has calmed and the Hebrews are safely on the other side, a final piece of orchestral tone-​painting ends the opera in a radiant C major. The resemblance to the end of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung has often been remarked upon.

Chromatic Stupefaction in Il barbiere The revival of Rossini’s serious operas is a welcome development, but there is only one Rossini opera that has never gone out of fashion: Il barbiere di Siviglia.

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  205 Table 6.4.  Il barbiere di Siviglia, act 1 No. 1. Introduzione (four movements): G, C, G→D, G No. 2. Cavatina (Figaro): C No. 3. Canzone (Count): a→C (the modulation repeated without final resolution to either key) No. 4. Duetto (Count, Figaro): G No. 5. Cavatina (Rosina): E No. 6. Aria (Basilio): D No. 7. Duet (Rosina, Figaro): G No. 8. Aria (Bartolo): E♭

No. 9. Finale (five movements): C, E♭, C, A♭, C

According to a probably apocryphal story, it is among the three works that Rossini said he would be remembered for.26 Table 6.4 lists the nine numbers in act 1. The famous overture, which Rossini had already used in two serious operas (Aureliano in Palmira and Elisabetta), is omitted from this list; it seems not to have been heard at the first performances, although it was Rossini who later introduced it into Il barbiere.27 Harmonically, act 1 lays greatest emphasis on the keys of G major and C major. Numbers 1–​7 all lie within the diatonic relations of G major, excepting only Rosina’s E-​major cavatina, “Una voce poco fa.” Numbers 7–​9 can be understood to represent the expanded realm of C major/​minor, especially in view of the finale’s use of E♭ and A♭ major, both of which are diatonic to C minor. One might include all of act 1 within a similarly expanded realm of C (always excepting Rosina’s cavatina) were it not for Basilio’s D-​major aria, “La calunnia.” Like most comic operas, Barbiere is full of surprises. A curious feature is that surprise and cartoonish rage are so often expressed by sudden moves, usually marked forte or fortissimo, to triads well to the flat side of the local key. These triads are usually chromatic mediants, either ♭III or ♭VI. Because the local key is often G major or C major, and because these keys are adjacent on the circle of fifths, the same flat triads appear repeatedly in similar roles. E♭ major, ♭III of C and ♭VI of G, is an especially frequent visitor, so much so that one might speak of a thematization of E♭ in the opera—​as a key, as a triad, and as a pitch class. Especially in the early part of act 1, pitch-​class E♭ is often accompanied or represented by its enharmonic twin, D♯. 26 The others were act 3 of Otello and act 2 of Guillaume Tell. The story is told in an account of Rossini’s funeral in The Musical World (London), 8 May 1869, and in many English-​language sources thereafter. 27 Gossett, “The Operas of Rossini: Problems of Textual Criticism in Nineteenth-​Century Opera” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1970), 279–​84.

206  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 6.16.  Il barbiere di Siviglia, Introduzione, mm. 9–​16

D♯ appears twice, both times in marked circumstances, in the orchestral prelude to the introduzione (example 6.16). In m. 13, D♯ forms part of an augmented triad; two measures later, it underscores a deceptive cadence to E minor. The middle portion of this movement begins in E minor, so D♯ is heard several more times. In Almaviva’s C-​major cavatina, the opening period, shown earlier (example 6.4), modulates to iiiT, E minor. The second period again moves toward E minor, touching on viio7 of that key as the Count exclaims “Oh, Dio!” (example 6.17, m. 126). When the Count resolves D♯ downward to D♮ instead of upward to E, the chromatic note is heard to change its meaning from ♯7̂ of E minor to ♭6̂ of G major.28 G major is the key in which the period will end a few measures later, but first it cadences deceptively to an E♭ major triad, ♭VI, marked sforzando (m. 129). The transformation of D♯ into E♭ is complete, at least for now. The third movement of the introduzione recapitulates the first. In the ensuing stretta, Almaviva and his servant Fiorello become exasperated with their hired musicians, who are pestering them with thanks for the gold they have received—​in the hope, of course, of receiving more. Their patience exhausted, the two explode into E♭-​major imprecations (example 6.18). Motion back to G major occurs through the bass formula ♭6̂–5̂–♯​4̂–5̂, dubbed by Vasili Byros the “Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol schema” (compare example 6.17, mm. 129–​30).29 E♭ persists as a melodic note even after G:V has been reached (m. 275). Figaro’s cavatina (no. 2) approaches its E♭-​major moment in almost exactly the same way, as ♭VI of G major following an ascending scale (example 6.19). The effect this time is milder. 28 In Riemannian terms, this is a transformation of an ascending leading tone into a descending leading tone. 29 Byros introduced the Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol schema in “Towards an ‘Archaeology’ of Hearing: Schemata and Eighteenth-​Century Consciousness,” Musica humana 1 (2009): 235–​306.

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  207 Example 6.17.  The same, mm. 121–​31

When Figaro gets as excited as Fiorello—​and for similar reasons—​he lashes out in A♭ major, ♭VI of the aria’s main key, C major (example 6.20). The bass seems to descend from ♭6̂ directly to ♯4̂, A♭ to F♯, but Rossini spells the latter note as G♭ (m. 198) and continues the descent through F to E, which supports III♯ in its usual guise as V of vi. The Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol formula is next applied to III♯-​as-​dominant (mm. 206–​8), followed by a diatonic descent to the tonic. From the repeated “Figaro, Figaro” to the return of C major, the music has completed a cycle of descending major thirds, I–​♭VI–​III♯–​I. The duet between the Count and Figaro (no. 4) has its own E♭-​major moment. After the two have agreed to work together, the Count realizes that he needs to know where he may find Figaro in the future. His uncertainty leads him from a jubilant G major to a—​this time—​subdued and questioning E♭ as ♭VI (example 6.21). The D-​major dominant that begins the example is lightly tonicized as the goal harmony in a Fonte. The thematization of E♭ continues in Basilio’s aria (no. 6). Here E♭ acts not as a chromatic mediant but as the Neapolitan in D major. Basilio detonates on the words “Come un colpo di cannone” (“like a cannon-​shot,” example 6.22), a line that could stand for many of the opera’s flat-​side explosions. Equally incendiary is the chromatic motion upward from the Neapolitan; the vocal ascent from E♭ to E♮,

208  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 6.18.  The same, mm. 265–​77 (text omitted)

♭2̂ to ♮2̂, is especially unexpected. A cadenza lunga in A major follows the passage quoted here. E♭ appears as the tonic of a number only in Bartolo’s aria, “A un dottor della mia sorte” (no. 8). That E♭ has been a highly charged key throughout the act helps to underscore the doctor’s inflated sense of himself. The aria’s middle section moves ultimately to G minor, iiiT, ending with a half cadence in that key (example 6.23). We hear the Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol pattern in bass and vocal line simultaneously (mm. 32–​ 34). Return to E♭-​as-​tonic is made from D-​as-​dominant, V of iiiT. The progression is simultaneously g:V–​VI and E♭:VII♯–​I. Bartolo’s ascending semitone, D4–​E♭4, sounds as 7̂–1̂ in E♭. Such a return to the tonic key anticipates the Verdi of Rigoletto: compare example 6.24, where C major arrives as f:VA but moves directly to D♭:I, with 7̂–1̂ (C–​D♭) highlighted in the vocal line.

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  209 Example 6.19.  Cavatina Figaro, mm. 115–​26 (vocal line omitted)

The finale (no. 9) takes the two flat mediants to another level, so to speak, by initiating an entire movement in each key area. The finale’s seven movements are outlined in table 6.5 (p. 213). The legends “open” and “closed” indicate whether a movement ends with a PAC in the key in which it began. Each movement that lacks closure ends on an active dominant, VA of some key. Within the seven-​movement scheme, movements I–​II group together as a closed unit in C major, despite a considerable stretch of music in E♭. Movements III–​IV are transitional, amounting to a large-​scale dominant in C major. Movement V represents the concertato or slow movement: A♭ major is approached as a deceptive cadence in C but is immediately treated as a tonic in its own right. Following full closure in ♭VIT, the brief orchestral transition returns to I in the most common way, by turning ♭VI into an augmented-​sixth chord that resolves to an active dominant. Movement VI is the tempo di mezzo, movement VII the stretta. E♭ major makes two appearances in movement I, much of which is a parlante in march rhythm (the Count is disguised as a soldier). The movement’s orchestral theme is presented in E♭ following two more or less complete statements in the tonic, C. The second appearance of E♭ recalls its use in earlier situations: Bartolo begins to read the Count a letter of exemption from billeting duty, but the Count interrupts him, telling him to go to the devil. In both of its appearances in movement I, E♭ major is followed by a passage in C minor that emphasizes VA. The second of these minor-​key passages is devoted

Example 6.20.  The same, mm. 187–​209

Example 6.21.  Duetto Almaviva–​Figaro, mm. 135–​42

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  211 Example 6.22.  Aria Basilio, mm. 58–​62

Example 6.23.  Aria Bartolo, mm. 30–​35

to Rosina, who complains of her harsh treatment at the hands of Bartolo, her legal guardian. The disguised Count affects rage and threatens to beat the doctor. Bartolo and his entourage call for help, and Figaro makes his dramatic entrance—​ in E♭ major, launching movement II. After a half cadence in E♭, the police arrive and pound on the door. All in the house become very quiet, their alarm coinciding with a remarkable modulation back to C major. This modulation is shown in reduced form in example 6.25. Harmonically, the bass’s C♭ is the most remote note heard in the finale thus far; ♭ as IIIT:♭6̂, C♭ is related to C major in an extremely indirect way. The hinge of the modulation is the reinterpretation of C♭ as B♮. The notated B♮ (m. 331) is initially heard as another statement of C♭. It is only when this bass note is treated as a dominant root that B♮ becomes a plausible identity: E minor (which never

212  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 6.24.  Verdi, Rigoletto, act 2, Duetto Gilda–​Rigoletto, mm. 134–​37

materializes except as a 64 chord) seems a more likely destination than F♭ minor. An augmented-​sixth chord on C♭ has been reinterpreted as e:V7. The arrival of a dominant 65 above B♮ (m. 341) signals a further transformation of this note, from e: 5̂ to C: 7̂.30 A single, sustained bass note has represented three scale degrees: ♭6̂ in E♭ major, 5̂ in E minor, and 7̂ in C major. Like many concertati, much of movement V is harmonically simple; its placement in ♭VIT accounts for the effect of harmonic distance. Nevertheless, Rossini employs not only the global but also the local ♭6̂: F♭, one fifth flatter than C♭, is heard repeatedly at the end of the movement, though never in the bass. Furthermore, it is contrasted with its enharmonic twin, E♮. Steven Laitz coined the term submediant complex for the frequent pattern in which ♭6̂ and ♯5̂ of a major key are played off against each other in music from Haydn to Brahms.31 Rossini’s use of the submediant complex is paradigmatic (example 6.26). F♭ resolves downward, E♮ upward, though not to the expected F minor. As ♭6̂ of ♭VIT, F♭ has a dark-​side-​of-​ the-​moon quality, which would be still greater if F♭ were heard as the root of a triad. Yet the treatment of E♮ is not straightforward either. It forms part of a 30 The principles followed in this analysis are similar to those employed by Gottfried Weber in his analysis of the slow introduction to Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet, K. 465, an analysis roughly contemporary to Il barbiere. An English translation by Ian Bent appears in Bent, ed., Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1: Fugue, Form and Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 157–​83. 31 Steven Laitz, “The Submediant Complex: Its Musical and Poetic Roles in Schubert’s Songs,” Theory and Practice 21 (1996): 123–​65.

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  213 Table 6.5.  Il barbiere di Siviglia, act 1, Finale I. Allegro, , C major; open

The Count, disguised as a drunken soldier, arrives at Bartolo’s house with a forged order for lodging. He is disrespectful and nearly comes to blows with the doctor, but he manages to pass a note to Rosina.

II. Allegro, , E♭→C; open taken alone, but closed if movements 1–​2 are taken together Figaro arrives, affects surprise, and urges calm. The police arrive.

III (very short). Moderato, , C; open

The police demand to know what is going on.

IV. Vivace, , G pedal; C:VT→VA; open

The principals tell their stories to the police, who announce to the Count that he is under arrest. He secretly shows one of them his order of nobility.

V. Andante, , A♭; closed, followed by a two-​measure orchestral modulation to C major General stupefaction, expressed quietly. Nobody moves.

VI. Allegro, , C major; open

Despite protestations from Bartolo and Basilio, the police order everyone to go about their business; the intervention is at an end.

VII. Vivace, , C major; closed

General stupefaction, expressed loudly. All express extreme confusion.

Example 6.25.  Il barbiere di Siviglia, act 1, Finale: Reduction of mm. 322–​59

chromatic mediant, III♯ in A♭ major, with an added minor seventh, mimicking f:V7.32 The chords containing F♭ and E♮ have two additional notes in common, G♮ and B♭. E♮ takes on a different and more striking quality in the orchestral transition (mm. 433–​34): it resolves the D♯ in an augmented-​sixth chord on A♭, changing the mode from a prospective C minor to a restored C major.

32 Compare Edward T. Cone’s account of the submediant complex (a term he does not use) in no. 6 of Schubert’s Moments musicaux, D. 780, in “Schubert’s Promissory Note: An Exercise in Musical Hermeneutics,” 19th-​Century Music 5 (1982): 233–​41.

Example 6.26.  Finale, mm. 429–​34 (texture and rhythm simplified)

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  215

Movement VII, the stretta, includes two notable occurrences of E♭ major. As in movement I, the main theme is heard first in C major, then in E♭. Also as in movement I, the E♭-​major statement begins pianissimo. There is no explosion—​yet. The second passage in E♭ comes in the double coda. This time ♭III is not tonicized, but the chord arrives precisely at the climax (example 6.27). Following Example 6.27.  The same, mm. 641–​50 (texture and rhythm simplified)

216  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

several tonic-​ oriented repetitions of the melodic fragment G–​ F♯–​F♮–​E (not shown), a diatonic ascent leads unexpectedly to ♭III; E♭ substitutes for the expected E♮. This initiates another, slower repetition of G–​F♯–​F♮–​E in the top voice, followed by an authentic cadence. The pre-​dominant harmony in the cadence is ♯ivo6/​5 (viio6/​5 of V), another chord that contains E♭. Reaching the cadence involves an ascent from this E♭ to the E♮ of the cadential 64 (mm. 647–​48), again emphasizing the triumph of the major mode over the minor.

Summary of Mediant Relations Rossini makes much of mediant relations in major keys. He treats diatonic and chromatic mediants differently. He also treats the two diatonic mediants, iii and vi, somewhat differently. He makes little use of Kopp’s disjunct mediants except—​as we shall see in the next chapter—​as indirect, long-​range relations. The upper diatonic mediant, iii, is routinely used as a modulatory goal, especially the goal of an opening period. The diatonic submediant, vi, appears frequently as a region in Schoenberg’s sense. Full closure with a vi:PAC occurs less often than half-​closure with a vi:HC. When a vi:PAC does occur, there is usually, but not always, a retransitional dominant (VA) to lead to the home tonic. A vi:HC is at least as likely to be followed by I, the home tonic, as it is to be followed by viT, the regional tonic. Direct progression from V/​vi to I brings us into the realm of the chromatic mediants, specifically the upper sharp mediant, III♯. Rossini often uses the III♯–​I progression, familiar from both early and late eighteenth-​century music. As a result, I:HC and vi:HC take on similar functions; VA (V of I) and III♯ (V of vi) are nearly interchangeable as half-​cadential goals. The primacy of the tonic-​dominant axis, the fifth-​relation V–​I, is challenged by the increased importance of the major-​ third relation. The lower flat mediant, ♭VI, is equal in importance to III♯ in Rossini’s musical language. This is, in part, because ♭VI turns I into its own III♯. Above all, ♭VIT is Rossini’s favorite key for the slow movement of an ensemble. In 1818, less than two years after Rossini’s music was first performed in Vienna, a critic there wrote: “[Rossini] generally precedes the stretta of the first finale with a very slow movement in a dark but theatrically effective A♭ major, whereupon the noisy stretta follows in a bright C major.”33 The critic may have been describing the first-​ act finale of Il barbiere, which follows precisely this pattern, but, if 33 From an anonymous review in the Wiener allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, quoted in Angela Pachovsky, “Zur Frage der Rossinismen bei Schubert,” in Franz Schubert: Werk und Rezeption, II: Bühnen-​und Orchesterwerke, Kammer-​und Klaviermusik, ed. Dietrich Berke et al. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2000), 37: “So lässt man gewöhnlich der Stretta des ersten Finale ein sehr langsames Tempo in einem finstern, aber zugleich theatralisch wirksamen As Dur vorausgehen, worauf die lärmende Stretta im hellen C folgt.”

  Rossini’s Mediants  T  217 transposition is admitted, it describes many ensembles and finales from Rossini’s Italian years. The major-​third relations I–​♭VI and III♯–​I are occasionally extended by Rossini into a complete cycle of major thirds, always descending: I–​♭VI–​III♯–​I. In Il barbiere, the cycle occurs at a relatively local level in Figaro’s cavatina. In Zelmira, it becomes the harmonic framework for two lengthy numbers, the introduzione (d→B♭→G♭→D) and the quintet (C→A♭→E→C).

C HA P T E R

Seven

Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas

Each of Mozart’s operas from Idomeneo onward begins and ends in the same key. Rossini followed this practice in only a few of his operas, including Mosè in Egitto (C minor/​major), La donna del lago (E♭ major), and Semiramide (D major). If its overture is disregarded, La gazza ladra (G major) may be added to this list. Although Rossini did not regard a return to an opera’s opening key as aesthetically essential, he clearly regarded tonal return as the norm for individual numbers. Whether a number lasts ten minutes or thirty, whether it contains three movements or eight, it will almost always end in the key in which it began. This is not true of Italian opera after Rossini. It marks him as a composer of pre-​Romantic sensibility. The expectation of tonal return can help a listener to determine which music is formally extraneous to a number. For example, the scena that precedes the first formally organized movement, the primo tempo, rarely counts as part of a number from a musical point of view. This is not true in every case, as I will argue in connection with Mosè in Egitto, but it is true the vast majority of the time. This chapter explores the harmonic, formal, and—​to a lesser degree—​dramatic significance of tonal departure and return in Rossini’s serious operas. The chapter is divided into four sections. In the first section, I analyze the central finale from Semiramide, an enormous number that exhibits both formal clarity and tonal cohesion. In section 2, I examine several numbers from La donna del lago, exploring the central role of E♭ major in that opera. In section 3 I discuss the final act of Otello, which comprises a single number. In section 4 I examine two oversize numbers, a quartet from Mosè in Egitto and a trio from Maometto II, which are formed by fusing two numbers, the first of which is left incomplete. In these compound numbers, tonal coherence seems weakest. Weak cohesion is also suggested by the ways in which Rossini treated these numbers when he adapted Mosè and Maometto for Paris.

Semiramide, Finale primo Semiramide is a big opera in every respect. Gaetano Rossi, the librettist, boasted to Giacomo Meyerbeer of the opera’s introduzione, which is 750 measures long.1 Rossi had written Semiramide riconosciuta for Meyerbeer a few years earlier. 1

The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0008

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  219 This length is exceeded by the finale to act 1, which occupies 927 measures and lasts half an hour. As we know from c­ hapter 5, a central finale typically adds an opening chorus to the four-​ movement solita forma. In this finale Rossini adds yet another movement, a solo for Semiramide, between the opening chorus and the tempo d’attacco. She sings another solo in the opera’s introduzione, where it is unusual for the prima donna to appear. These solo movements help to compensate the soprano for the lack of a traditional rondò-​finale at the end of the opera. Table 7.1 outlines the finale’s six-​ movement structure. Using Gossett’s designation of movements as either kinetic or static, we may say that four movements are static (discounting, for now, the recitative that opens movement II) and two are kinetic. Each kinetic movement contains stage action and ends with a half cadence to prepare the following movement. Each static movement is tonally closed, ends with a coda, and expresses a single dramatic situation. The finale depicts a grand ceremony during which Semiramide, the widowed Queen of Babylon, is expected to name the next king. Example 7.1 is a figured-​bass reduction of the finale, using a simplified form of Schenkerian notation. This notation, and notations similar to it, will be used frequently in the remaining chapters. Whole notes indicate tonics of relatively large scale; any passage that is represented by a whole note includes one or more PACs in the indicated key. Half notes are used for important half cadences, some of which end with V7 rather than V.2 Some of these half-​cadential dominants are shown as progressing, later, to their respective tonics. Quarter notes appear rarely; they denote consonant triads that are tonicized locally but are not confirmed by an authentic cadence (i.e., a V–​I leap in the bass is lacking).3 Unstemmed notes have a variety of meanings, including cadential goals of small scope, local dominants, and chords built on passing or neighboring notes. Where the figures show a diminished seventh above the bass, a fully diminished seventh chord should be assumed. Example 7.2 extracts from example 7.1 the whole, half, and quarter notes, representing a deeper layer of reduction. As in example 7.1, any triad built on a half note is assumed to be major. In movement V, a few extra bass notes are provided to clarify the unusual series of half cadences there. In these and later examples, rightward arrows indicate dominant-​to-​tonic progressions, which are not always cadences. Leftward arrows indicate motions from a local tonic to its (major) dominant. Slurs delineate stepwise bass motions; these need not be, and often are not, linear progressions as defined by Schenker. A dotted tie denotes the prolongation of a harmony in the Schenkerian sense, together with its bass note. A harmony may change mode during its prolongation; see, for example, the prolonged F in movement V, which changes from minor to major. The function of a prolonged harmony may also change, usually from a local 2 William Caplin would call these “dominant arrivals” rather than half cadences. On this and other issues related to half cadences, see L. Poundie Burstein, “The Half Cadence and Other Such Slippery Events,” Music Theory Spectrum 36 (2014): 203–​27. 3 The definition of “authentic cadence” used here follows Caplin.

Table 7.1. Rossini, Semiramide, act 1, Finale I. Chorus (Allegro moderato, , 180 mm.): C–​a–​C (=​I–​viT–​I); static

The chorus is in da capo form, ABA, with a middle section in the relative minor. The people praise the auspicious day (A); priests ask the gods’ protection (B).

II. Recitative and cantabile (Andantino, , 16 +​90 mm.), Semiramide with chorus and pertichini: C→G; E♭ (=​ I→VT; ♭IIIT); static

A short recitative, ending with V:PAC, is followed by what sounds like the primo tempo of an aria, featuring a typically Rossinian open melody. The cantabile is firmly in E♭. It begins with the theme for four horns that was heard in the overture. Later, the same theme is sung by the chorus. Semiramide announces that she has made her choice, but first she swears all present to obey the new king, whoever he may be. They swear. III. Tempo d’attacco (Allegro, , 116 mm.): G→A♭:V7 (=​ VT→♭VI:VA); kinetic

Several factors identify this movement as a tempo d’attacco, including tempo, meter, lack of tonal closure, and the fact that a single theme is sung by several characters in turn. The movement begins in G major, the dominant key. A series of transient keys descends in thirds, C–​A–​F, suggesting C major as a future goal. Semiramide announces, to general surprise, that she will marry the new king. Her choice is her general Arsace, who, unbeknownst to her, is her own son (she will learn the truth in act 2). The people’s acclaim, and the private fury of Semiramide’s erstwhile lover Assur, are interrupted by lightning and noise emanating from the tomb of Nino, the king/​husband whom Semiramide and Assur murdered fifteen years earlier. The ensuing consternation receives expression in the concertato. IV. Concertato (Andantino, , 99 mm.): a♭→A♭ (=​ ♭viT→♭VIT); static

The concertato begins in the key of the flat disjunct mediant, A♭ minor, C major’s hexatonic pole. The mode changes midway to the more typical ♭VIT, corresponding to the four-​flat key signature. Pseudo-​canon is used (see ­chapter 5). Nino’s ghost becomes visible just before the turn to major. V. Tempo di mezzo (Allegro molto moderato, , 67 mm.): f→c:V (=​ ivT→VA); kinetic

The movement is mostly in F minor, but the ghost instigates transitory modulations to five-​flat keys, D♭ major and B♭ minor. Return to the tonic minor (C minor) is made through the Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol pattern in the bass, ending with a half cadence that directly recalls the half cadence that prepared movement IV. Nino’s ghost advances, is questioned by Semiramide and others, and predicts Arsace’s ascent to the throne. First, however, Arsace must sacrifice an unnamed victim. Arsace promises to obey but asks whom he must kill. The ghost disappears without answering. VI. Stretta (Vivace, , 348 mm.): C (=​I); static

All exclaim over the fury of the gods. There are two strophes, with no ritornello between them; an introductory strain precedes the first strophe. Strophe 1 ends with a:HC (=​ C:III♯); strophe 2 ends with C:PAC, followed by a lengthy coda.

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  221 tonic to a local dominant. A square bracket denotes a bass motion by descending major third to a local tonic; any such bracket indicates the progression III♯–​I or, less often, iii–​I, even if the first harmony is a local dominant in another key. Arabic numerals above a bass note carry their usual figured-​bass meaning; only enough figures are provided to clarify a chord’s identity. A Roman numeral is placed at the beginning of each movement to show that movement’s ordinal position. It is easy to reduce example 7.2 to include tonics only, yielding, in effect, a list of keys or regions used in Rossini’s finale. The result may be seen in example 7.3. Tonics enclosed in parentheses (movement III) may be regarded as secondary in significance for reasons described in table 7.1. Example 7.3 resembles the deep-​level reductions in Paul Hindemith’s The Craft of Musical Composition.4 Hindemith used such reductions to determine the main tonality of a piece from strings of individual tonalities. These reductions have a certain utility, but it is limited. In this case, the reduction demonstrates that Rossini favors keys to the flat side of his central key, C major. Most striking is the series of three keys at the end, ♭VIT–​ivT–​I, which resembles an expanded plagal cadence. Movement III briefly explores major-​mode-​derived versions of VIT and IVT (A major and F major) before movements IV–​V settle on minor-​mode-​derived versions of these same degrees (A♭ major and F minor). If the order of keys is disregarded, the example can also be read as a quasi-​ symmetrical array centered on C. A♮, a minor third below C, is balanced by E♭, a minor third above it. The dominant, G, is balanced by the subdominant, F. Only A♭ seems to lack a symmetrical partner (it would be E). E♭ might be regarded as symmetrical to A♭ in a C-​minor diatonic space, as the diatonic mediant and submediant respectively. Example 7.3 fails in at least one respect: it does not provide a syntactically coherent thread through the finale, precisely because it omits all harmonies that are not tonics. Beginning in the mid-​ eighteenth century, when composers began routinely to write interior sections that end on active dominants, dominants and half cadences took on a formal significance comparable to that of tonics and PACs. For this reason, reducing a post-​Baroque work to its tonics often obscures, rather than clarifies, its large-​scale harmonic syntax.5 In this case the problem is evident in the kinetic movements III and V, each of which ends with emphasis on dominant harmonies that prepare the following static movements. In movement III, the strongest point of arrival, marked by a thunderstorm of timpani, is on C-​as-​dominant at the moment when the dead King Nino first shows his unhappiness at the planned wedding of his widow to his son. This dominant arrival is more powerful than the three tonics that precede it. Example 7.2 suggests that the succession C–​A–​F–​C

Paul Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition, vol. 1: Theoretical Part, rev. ed., trans. Arthur Mendel (New York: Associated Music Publishers, 1945), 148–​51 and 204–​19. See especially the last paragraph on p. 151. 5 For further thoughts on this issue from a Schenkerian perspective, see Carl Schachter, “Analysis by Key: Another Look at Modulation,” Music Analysis 6 (1987): 289–​318; rept. in Schachter, Unfoldings, 134–​60. 4

Example 7.1.  Semiramide, act 1, Finale, bass-​line reduction

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  223 Example 7.2.  A further reduction of ­example 7.1

Example 7.3.  A further reduction of ­example 7.2, showing tonics only

Example 7.4.  An alternate reduction of ­example 7.2, including dominants

might be understood to prolong C: C-​as-​tonic becomes C-​as-​dominant, elaborated by a plagal progression. None of this is visible from example 7.3. Example 7.4, in conventional Schenkerian notation, is a first attempt to correct the problem that we identified in example 7.3. It includes a local V–​I progression at the boundary of movements III–​ IV (kinetic→static) and another at the boundary of movements V–​VI (also kinetic→static). These two moves, to the hexatonic poles A♭ minor for the concertato and C major for the stretta, lead to what Edward T. Cone would have called structural downbeats.6 Rossini underscores the parallelism by using the same motivic material for both dominants, which are separated by 170 measures (example 7.5). Example 7.5b prepares C minor, creating Cone, Musical Form and Musical Performance, 24–​26. 6

Example 7.5.  Two passages over dominant pedals

a. mm. 401–​13 b. mm. 571–​79

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  225 Example 7.6.  Another reduction of ­example 7.2, emphasizing fifth-​relations

an especially bright effect when C major arrives to begin the stretta. Hierarchically, example 7.4 shows A♭ as a third-​divider between the tonic of movement I and the (minor) subdominant of movement V, the tempo di mezzo. Example 7.6 takes a different interpretive tack. Half notes in this example represent functional dominants, which may or may not represent half cadences. It treats as parallel the moves to remote flat keys in movements II and IV, the two slow movements. It also notes that each of these moves interrupts a potentially simpler harmonic connection: a resumption of G major (VT) in movements II–​III; a V7–​i resolution in F minor (ivT) in movements III–​V. The example expresses the interruptive quality of each slow movement by placing its flat-​ side root in parentheses. In addition, the series of half cadences in movement V is differentiated. The first half cadence, on F, is treated as a continuation of the movement’s opening F harmony: F-​as-​tonic becomes F-​as-​dominant. The second half cadence, on C, is regarded as least structural because it is the middle term in a sequence of three. The last half cadence, on G, is the sequence’s goal, yielding the progression ivT–​VA for movement V as a whole and setting up the return of I in movement VI. Treating as parenthetical the finale’s most striking harmonic move, to A♭ minor, may seem a radical analytical step, but it makes both musical and dramatic sense of the remarkable ending to movement III. Semiramide’s all-​too-​human will—​her desire to marry Arsace, crown him king, and stage an impressive ceremony for her people—​takes her precisely as far as the half cadence on C, to which she sings (in recitative) “Assyrians! In him [Arsace] I restore to you Nino and his son.” She does not know how truly she speaks, and she has overstepped. At this point the gods intervene. Her terror, and that of her people, is symbolized by the sequence of root-​position dominant sevenths that ascend—​parallel fifths and all—​over the bass notes C–​D♭–​D–​E♭ (see example 7.1, system 4). A superhuman force has taken over, and before it human actors are as powerless as the conventional rules of voice leading. The F-​minor beginning of movement V is where human action resumes. The root-​and-​branch ascent from F:V to A♭:V, and the concertato that follows, occur beyond the reach of human volition. The same cannot be said of Semiramide’s solo in movement II, where she demonstrates her power by demanding, and receiving, obeisance from the Assyrians. Like many slow movements in Italian opera, this is a frozen moment in time, but dramaturgically and musically it is less radical than the concertato. In example 7.6, the entire finale is viewed as anchored in upper and lower fifth-​ relations to the tonic: I–​VT–​(I♭7)–​ivT–​VA–​I. Shorn of mediant interpolations, this harmonic structure could originate in the eighteenth century, except that the subdominant key is primarily minor rather than major.

226  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera None of the reductive analyses offered thus far addresses what may be the most remarkable harmonic aspect of Rossini’s finale: its use of associative chromaticism. The first chromatic sonority occurs unobtrusively on the fourth beat of m. 3 (example 7.7a). It is an incomplete diminished-​seventh chord of the common-​ tone variety, formed by the chromatic passing tones D♯ and F♯ above a C pedal. The complete chord, C–​D♯–​F♯–​A, with either D♯ or F♯ in the bass, is heard several times in the movement’s A-​minor middle section. The last of these appearances (7.7b) precedes the da capo by only four measures, so 7.7b and 7.7a are effectively juxtaposed, helping further to bind their minor-​third-​related keys. The main part of movement II is in E♭ major, another key related to C by minor third. The same diminished-​seventh chord, this time with E♭ in the bass, is prominent in the movement’s main theme (7.7c), which is played by four horns before it is sung by the chorus. When played on natural horns, the necessity for hand-​stopping gives the chord a distinctive timbre. The voice-​leading situation is that of 7.7a—​a common-​tone diminished-​seventh chord over a tonic pedal, with the passing motion 2̂–♯​2̂–​3̂ in the top-​voice melody. Example 7.7.  Nine occurrences of a single diminished-​seventh chord in the finale

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  227 Example 7.7.  Continued

228  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 7.7.  Continued

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  229 Example 7.7.  Continued

a. mm. 1–​4 b. mm. 122–​28 (voices omitted) c. mm. 197–​200 d. mm. 268–​72 e. mm. 298–​302 f. mm. 479–​84 (voices omitted) g. mm. 451–​58 (choral parts only) h. mm. 561–​64 j. mm. 854–​66 (vocal parts only) As Semiramide swears her people to loyalty, her final E♭ cadence repeatedly goes awry, landing instead—​on the key words “fedeltà” (“loyalty”) and “giuro” (“I swear”)—​ on viio7/​V, A♮–​C–​E♭–​G♭ (7.7d). A♮ is the bass note, the last of the chord’s four notes to appear in this capacity. The effect of the recurring deceptive cadence is one of foreboding, underscored by tremolando strings and the timbre of hand-​stopped horns. Although the words sung are straightforward, the music undercuts them. We know this scene will not end happily. In movement III, Semiramide’s G-​major announcement that she will wed Nino’s successor elicits cries of “Oh ciel!” (“O heavens!”). This cry is set to our diminished-​ seventh chord, now functioning as G:viio7 (7.7e). The chord appears again toward the end of movement IV, but in a more conventional way, as a substitute for I6 in an A♭-​major cadenza lunga (7.7f). There are more striking harmonic effects in this concertato, whose governing topic is that

230  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

of a funeral march.7 The movement’s initial key of A♭ minor is highly marked, both absolutely (its scale contains seven flats) and in relative terms (it is in HEXPOLE relation to C major). The most chilling moment is reached as Nino’s tomb groans open and the chorus sings “The invisible hand of death opens the door . . . and who [is it]?” (7.7g). The passage, marked pianissimo, is fully scored, and it lies in F♭ major, ♭VIT/​♭VIT in relation to C major; its scale contains eight flats. This is the finale’s point of furthest remove, and it hints at a division of the tonic octave, C–​C, into major thirds, C–​A♭–​F♭–​C.8 Our diminished-​seventh chord appears in example 7.7g each time the tenors sing D♭♭—​the finale’s flattest note—​but it is the flat-​side quality of the entire passage that seems most salient. Toward the end of movement V, the same diminished-​seventh chord, acting now as viio7/​V in C minor, introduces the concluding dominant pedal (7.7h). This occurs as the ghost issues a final warning before returning to the tomb. The music above the pedal then quotes a fragment of the concertato. The final cadences of movement VI, the stretta, are interrupted much as they were in movement II—​by vocal exclamations set to viio7/​V (7.7j). The key is now C major rather than E♭ major, but the resemblance to example 7.7d seems too close to be fortuitous. If we consider the occurrences of our diminished-​seventh chord throughout the finale, fortuity is arguably at work only in movement IV, the concertato. Elsewhere, the chord seems to be deliberately sought out and highlighted after its unassuming appearance in m. 3 (7.7a).9 Of the three diminished-​seventh chords that exist within the chromatic scale, Rossini highlights the same chord, over and over again, within the keys of C, A, G, E♭, A♭, and F♭. Rossini’s use of a recurring dissonant chord as an agent of coherence precedes by a dozen years Meyerbeer’s use of the same chord in Les Huguenots (discussed in ­chapter 10), and by thirty-​five years Verdi’s similar procedure in Un ballo in maschera (discussed in ­chapter 14).

Tonal Coherence in La donna del lago Rossini sought out adventurous subjects for his Neapolitan operas. It was he, not his impresario Domenico Barbaja, who chose the subjects and librettists for Otello,

See Frits Noske, “Verdi and the Musical Figure of Death,” in Atti del IIIo Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani, 349–​86; revised version as “The Musical Figure of Death,” in Noske, The Signifier and the Signified: Studies in the Operas of Mozart and Verdi (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 171–​214. 8 “Point of furthest remove,” like “topic,” originates in Leonard Ratner’s Classic Music. 9 The same diminished-​seventh chord, in a distinctive scoring, appears as the “Samiel” motive in Weber’s Der Freischütz. Rossini heard Der Freischütz in Vienna in March 1822, about six months before he began work on Semiramide; see Richard Osborne, Rossini, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 74. As Osborne notes, Rossini had already plumbed the depths of diminished-​seventh horror in Armida (1817). 7

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  231 the first Italian opera based on a Shakespeare tragedy,10 and La donna del lago, the first Italian opera based on the writings of Walter Scott. Rossini chose the subject of Maometto II before the play on which it was based, Anna Erizo by Cesare della Valle, was finished. La donna del lago is set in sixteenth-​century Scotland. It recounts a revolt by Highlanders against King James V, called Giacomo in the opera. Scotland is depicted as a warlike and untamed land; Rossini and his librettist Andrea Leona Tottola include Ossianic references, including a chorus of bards accompanied by harp. Elena (Ellen), the lady of the lake, is loved by the king but also by two rebel warriors, Rodrigo (Rodrick) and Malcom (Malcolm). Elena’s father Duglas (Douglas), a rebel leader, has promised her to Rodrigo, but she is secretly in love with Malcom. Meanwhile King James woos her, disguised as the hunter Uberto (Fitz-​James in the poem). Rodrigo is eventually killed by the king in single combat. In the opera’s final scene, the king reveals his identity and allows Elena and Malcom to wed while pardoning the defeated rebels. Although it is composed on a lavish scale, La donna del lago is more concise than Semiramide. It is also the most unified of Rossini’s serious operas from the standpoint of key. Each of its two acts ends in E♭ major, and act 1 begins there as well. The keys of other numbers are remarkably restricted. Except for Nos. 10–​11, discussed below, there are only four main tonics: E♭ (major), E (major), A (major), and C (mostly major). Table 7.2 shows the opera’s thirteen numbers and their principal keys. Recitatives between numbers are omitted; they were composed by an anonymous assistant. Whoever composed the recitatives also composed Duglas’s single-​movement aria in act 1.11 Several numbers in the opera contain more than four movements: there are five in the introduzione, five in Rodrigo’s cavatina (no. 6), six in the trio (no. 9), and eight in the first-​act finale. The presence of many short movements contributes to the opera’s impression of concision: the finale’s eight movements, for example, take just over twenty minutes in performance. The trio, a high point of the opera, represents an interesting expansion of la solita forma. The number begins as a conventional duet between Elena and Uberto, the disguised king. The keys of its four movements are also conventional: C–​A♭–​c–​ C. Rodrigo enters at the beginning of the cabaletta and is instantly jealous of Uberto. This new and ominous dramatic situation, which leads to Rodrigo’s death, forces the number into a second tempo di mezzo and a second cabaletta (technically a stretta, because there now three characters). The resulting six-​ movement

10 Italian operas based on Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors and The Merry Wives of Windsor were composed by Stephen Storace (English, but trained in Naples) and Antonio Salieri, respectively, in the late eighteenth century. Both operas were composed for Vienna. 11 Rossini often employed an assistant to compose recitatives, but he did so more consistently than usual in La donna del lago. The opera was written to replace a commissioned work that Spontini had failed to deliver on time, so Rossini was working at top speed. For a history of the opera’s creation, see H. Colin Slim’s preface to the critical edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

232  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 7.2.  La donna del lago, outline Act 1 No. 1. Sinfonia, e Introduzione No. 2. Coro e Duetto (Elena, Uberto)

E♭

A (coro); C (duetto)

No. 3. Cavatina Malcom

E

No. 4. Aria Duglas

E♭

No. 5. Duettino (Elena, Malcom)

A

No. 6. Coro e Cavatina Rodrigo

C

No. 7. Coro e Finale I

E♭

Act 2 No. 8. Aria Uberto

E

No. 9. Terzetto (Elena, Uberto, Rodrigo)

C

No. 10. Aria Malcom

F

No. 11. Canzoncina (Uberto)

B♭

No. 12. Coro No. 13. Rondò Elena

E♭ E♭

structure features chromatic mediants a major third on either side of C major: C–​ A♭–​c–​C–​E→c–​c→C. Also noteworthy is the amount of time spent in C minor in movements V–​VI; only the extensive coda returns to C major. Abrupt juxtapositions of third-​related keys are a recurring feature of this opera. A small-​scale example occurs in the first-​act finale, where the music for stage band, or banda, baldly juxtaposes C minor and E♭ major (example 7.8). C minor is tonicized, but no cadence is made there; viT simply returns to I. The special way that Rossini handles keys in this opera is clearest in the introduzione, which alternates movements in E-​flat major and G major as shown in table 7.3. Each movement, including the recitative, ends with a perfect authentic cadence. The table fails to convey this number’s unusual economy of means. Practical reasons may be a factor here (see note 11). Movement IV is a reprise of movement II recast in duet texture. The hunting-​horn music of movement I returns in movements III and V. All movements are in two-​beat meters, either  or , and thematic similarities abound. Despite its division into movements, the introduzione is a unified tableau of roughly eighteen minutes’ duration. Its music echoes in many a later rustic introduzione, from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell to Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix to Verdi’s Luisa Miller and Don Carlos.

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  233 Example 7.8.  La donna del lago, act 1, Finale, mm. 136–​47

Table 7.3.  La donna del lago, Introduzione I. Sinfonia and chorus II. Canzonetta (Elena) III. Recitative (Elena, Uberto) IV. Duettino (Elena, Uberto) V. Stretta

E♭ G

E♭→D G

E♭

Beginnings and ends of the five movements are shown in example 7.9. As with most of Rossini’s Neapolitan operas, there is no overture, although no. 1 is headed Sinfonia, e introduzione. The first three notes suggest C minor (7.9a), but the first triad to be tonicized is G minor (mm. 5–​7). The bass of the sixteen-​measure Maestoso completes an E♭-​major octave divided into three-​note descents. At the end of movement I, offstage horns intone the three-​note motive (7.9b), now placed in the upper voice and accompanied by horn fifths. (For many, this passage will recall Beethoven’s piano sonata Das Lebewohl, op. 81a.) G is the common-​tone link between the opening chorus and Elena’s canzonetta, “Oh mattutini albori.” The hunting horns resume after Elena’s song is finished: G major returns to E♭ major with the common tone, G, prominent (7.9c). The sole inter-​movement connection by fifth appears between movements III–​IV (7.9d), where D:I is reinterpreted as G:V. The juncture between movements IV–​V (7.9e) is almost identical to that between movements II–​III (7.9c), but the role of G as common tone is made more explicit by its appearance in the bass as horn calls again ring out (m. 533). E♭ also appears prominently in the G-​major music (m. 530). Rossini thus forges a closer interpenetration of the two keys, G and E♭.

234  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 7.9.  Beginnings and ends of movements in the Introduzione

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  235 Example 7.9.  Continued

a. mm. 1–​16 b. mm. 305–​19 c. mm. 378–​83 d. mm. 475–​79 e. mm. 529–​36 Example 7.10.  A summary of harmonic links in the Introduzione

Example 7.10 summarizes harmonic connections between movements of the introduzione. In neo-​Riemannian terms, moves from E♭ to G represent LP; those from G to E♭ represent PL. B​♮ is chromatic in E♭ major; E♭ and B♭ are chromatic in G major. These common-​tone links are supplemented by additional ones within Elena’s canzonetta (movement II, example 7.11). The song, which is overheard by the lovestruck king, is composed in a simple style that distantly recalls the duettino “Nel cor più non mi sento” from Paisiello’s L’amor contrastato (1788).12 The form is ternary. The music touches on E minor, G major’s relative, in both A and B sections. Each A section of the canzonetta includes a short appendix or clarifying period; example 7.11a shows its first occurrence. B4 is harmonized alternately with I (m. 347) and III♯ (m. 349); the latter harmony is approached by a Phrygian cadence, as if modulating to E minor. The brief middle section is primarily in E minor, with B4 is its first note (m. 353). At the juncture between sections B and A′, E minor returns to G major with no intervening dominant, and with barely 12 Beethoven wrote a set of six variations for piano (WoO 70) on Paisiello’s melody.

236  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 7.11.  Two passages from Elena’s canzonetta (Introduzione, movement II)

a. mm. 345–​54 b. mm. 359–​62 concealed parallel fifths between melody and bass (7.11b). B4 is again prominent as a common tone. The first-​act finale, labeled Coro e Finale primo in the score, is summarized in table 7.4. March-​like passages for stage band are included in movements I, III, and VIII; all are in E♭ major. As in the introduzione, the large role given to the band encouraged Rossini to use a single, brass-​friendly key for long stretches of music. Oscillation between E♭ major and G major returns, with E♭ used now for martial (rather than hunting) music and G major used again for its pastoral associations.

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  237 Table 7.4.  La donna del lago, act 1, Finale I.

Chorus (warriors)

II.

Terzettino (Elena, Rodrigo, Duglas)

III. Malcom solo, then with Elena and Duglas IV. Tempo di mezzo 1 (Rodrigo, then others) V.

Concertato

VI. Tempo di mezzo 2 (all) VII. Tempo di mezzo 3 (chorus of bards, etc.) VIII. Stretta (all)

E♭ G

E♭

C→A♭ A♭

C→c→E♭:V

E♭→e♭→E♭:V7 E♭

Table 7.5.  La donna del lago, act 2, nos. 9–​13 No. 9. Terzetto (Elena, Uberto, Rodrigo)

C

No. 10. Aria Malcom

F

No. 11. Canzoncina (Uberto)

B♭

No. 12. Coro No. 13. Rondò Elena

E♭ E♭

The key of G is readily associated with Elena, since she participates in most of the G-​major passages throughout act 1, including her duet with Uberto. G major occurs hardly at all in act 2, and the absence of Elena’s key there is dramatically significant. Table 7.5 isolates the opera’s last five numbers, constituting all of act 2 except Uberto’s act-​opening cavatina (E major). The first number shown in the table is the six-​movement trio discussed earlier. As we saw, the trio incorporates E major, the key of Uberto’s aria, as upper sharp mediant (USM) to C major. The same relation is used in the following number, Malcom’s aria, which repeatedly emphasizes A major in an F-​major context.13 E, A, and C—​all major—​are the opera’s main keys aside from the principal key, E♭. The harmonic logic of act 2 is apparent. In an opera in which three of thirteen numbers are in C major, C major moves to the opera’s principal key, E♭ major, through a series of descending fifths. This occurs as the Highland rebellion is defeated and the fate of the protagonists is decided. The agent of victory and reconciliation is the king, who increasingly controls events. In the palace, still 13 See mm. 7–​8, 20–​21, 30, and 36–​37 in the primo tempo and mm. 121–​24 and 147–​50 in the cabaletta.

238  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera pretending to be Uberto, he sings Elena’s signature song, labeled canzoncina (“little song”) by the editors of the critical edition. The libretto specifies that the king is singing from his chamber, offstage, but he knows that Elena can hear him. Rather than singing in Elena’s key of G major, he sings her song in B♭, which the series of descending fifths soon turns into E♭:V. The king has deprived all the other principals of their freedom of action: he has killed Rodrigo, taken Duglas and Malcom prisoner, and reduced Elena to begging for their release. All keys that earlier seemed distinct from E♭ major are assimilated to it, and so is Elena’s song. E♭ is less the king’s key (Duglas’s aria is also in E♭) than it is the key of Scotland. The king’s acts of magnanimity—​freeing the prisoners and relinquishing Elena to Malcom—​motivate Elena’s exuberant rondò-​finale, but she has been assimilated into the masculine Scottish milieu with its hunts, battles, and bards. Despite the au courant use of Walter Scott, La donna del lago is very much an opera of Restoration. It could have been called La clemenza di Giacomo.14

Pathways through Otello, Act 3 During Rossini’s life and for decades thereafter, the last act of Otello was the most celebrated act in any of his serious operas. A study by Imogen Fellinger ranks Otello as Rossini’s most popular opera of any kind before 1830, followed by Il barbiere, La gazza ladra, and Tancredi.15 Roberta Montemorra Marvin has counted 291 separate productions of Otello, in eight languages, during the period 1816–​ 1890.16 It was Verdi’s Otello that displaced Rossini’s opera and made it the rarity that it is today. Michael Collins, who edited Otello for the critical edition, writes: “It is clear from the structure of the autograph manuscript that Rossini considered the third act of Otello to be a single unit within which some sections are all but autonomous.”17 Act 3 takes place in a single location, Desdemona’s bedchamber, and in continuous dramatic time. In what sense does it constitute a single number? The act begins and ends in E♭ major; can it therefore be said to be “in” E♭? What would it mean to say that?

14 Rossini wrote to his mother on 8 October 1819: “I have finished my opera, which carries the title La donna del lago. The subject is a little romantic but seems to me effective.” The letter is quoted in several sources, including Ilaria Bonomi, “Il filone scottiano nell’opera del primo Ottocento tra classicismo e romanticismo,” in L’italiano sul palcoscenico, ed. Nicola De Blasi and Pietro Trifone (e-​book, Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 2019). The key word is surely “but.” 15 Imogen Fellinger, “Musik aus italienischen Opern in europäischen Musik-​Periodica aus der Zeit von 1800 bis 1830,” in Atti del XIV Congresso della Società internazionale di musicologia: Study sessions, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi et al. (Turin: EDT, 1990), 11–​12. 16 Roberta Montemorra Marvin, “Il libretto di Berio per l’Otello di Rossini,” Bollettino del centro rossiniano di studi 31 (1991): 55–​76. 17 Michael Collins, introduction to the critical edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). A facsimile of Rossini’s autograph was published by Garland Press in 1979 as part of the series Early Romantic Opera, edited and with an introduction by Philip Gossett.

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  239 For later Italian composers, the issue of key is distinct from that of number-​ definition; for Rossini the two are intimately related. The question of key touches on the larger issue of key-​identity in any musical work of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A brief theoretical excursus is therefore in order. Among modern definitions of key, the most restrictive is Schenker’s. For Schenker, a musical work defines a key if and only if it composes out that key’s tonic triad. Composing-​out (Auskomponierung) is based on either or both of two features: a bass arpeggiation (Bassbrechung) through the triad’s fifth, either I–​V–​I (complete cadence) or V–​I (auxiliary cadence); and a fundamental linear progression (Urlinie) that traverses an interval of the same triad.18 Although Schenker never puts it in quite this way, a work that possesses a fundamental bass arpeggiation but lacks a complete Urlinie is in some sense an incomplete composition, but its key is not in doubt. A work that has the requisite linear progression but fails to accompany it with the appropriate bass arpeggiation is, like the excerpt from Stravinsky’s Piano Concerto discussed in c­ hapter 3, one that frustrates key-​definition even as it suggests it. A work that lacks both elements—​ linear progression and bass arpeggiation—​cannot be said to compose out any triad and, therefore, cannot meaningfully be said to be in any key, even if it begins and ends with the same triad. Schoenberg’s criteria for key-​definition are nearly as severe as Schenker’s. As Schoenberg wrote in 1934, “Without the application of very definite art-​means a key cannot be unequivocally expressed. . . . All the tonal successions, chords and chord-​successions in a piece achieve a unified meaning through their definite relation to a tonal centre and also through their mutual ties.”19 Again, beginning and ending with the same triad, or with passages that separately express the same key, is not enough. Schoenberg wrote in 1949, “The kind of tonality which is preferred today, which uses all kind of incoherent dissonances and returns without any reason to a major triad or to a minor triad, and rests then for a time and considers this the tonality of the piece, seems to me doomed.”20 He was thinking not of Italian opera but of the neo-​tonal music that prevailed in 1940s America. Act 3 of Otello does not use “all kind of incoherent dissonances,” but do its parts satisfy Schoenberg’s call for “unified meaning through their definite relation to a tonal centre and also through their mutual ties”? Do they satisfy Schenker’s still stricter definition of tonality as the composing-​out of a tonic triad? Or is the act musically unified only in some looser sense, one of departure from and return to its starting point? To answer these questions in detail would vastly exceed the scope of this section, indeed of this book. My focus will be selective. Table 7.6 gives an overview of act 3.21 Except for the duet, its six parts are not labeled in the autograph, but the divisions are clear. Names for the parts are my 18 On V–​I as the basis for an entire piece see Schenker, Free Composition, 89 and Fig. 110, a3. 19 Schoenberg, “Problems of Harmony,” in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 275 and 278. 20 Schoenberg, letter to G. F. Stegmann, 26 January 1949, in Arnold Schoenberg Letters, ed. Erwin Stein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 266–​67. 21 A useful survey of act 3, with many musical examples, is found in Marcus Chr. Lippe, Rossinis opere serie: Zur musikalisch-​dramatischen Konzeption (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 2005), 93–​108 (with examples

240  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 7.6.  Otello, act 3, outline [Prelude] I. Scena 1 (Desdemona; versi sciolti) II. Romanza (Desdemona; settenario except for brief recitatives) III. Preghiera (Desdemona; settenario) IV. Scena 2 (Otello, later Desdemona; versi sciolti)

[E♭]

E♭→G:V g→E♭ A♭

C→A

V. Duetto (Desdemona, Otello; settenario and ottonario)

D→d→D

VI. Finale ultimo (Otello and others; senario)

B♭→E♭

Example 7.12.  Otello, act 3, mm. 18–​21: A recurring plagal cadence

own, but all are conventional. (The opening orchestral passage, labeled “Prelude” in the table, belongs to what I have termed scena 1.) Only beginning and ending keys are listed for each part; each part ends with a PAC in its final key, with or without a codetta. There are three codettas in E♭ major: to the prelude, the romanza, and the finale ultimo. All three involve a plagal progression that features the flatted sixth degree, C♭. The first two codettas use the specific plagal cadence shown in example 7.12. The act also begins with a plagal cadence. Plagal cadences are not common in Rossini, but in this act they are treated thematically, almost as a leitmotif denoting solemnity and grief. Plagal cadences are used only in E♭ major; this is one way in which E♭ emerges as the main key. The effect is most striking at the end of the romanza, where music from the prelude returns unexpectedly. The librettist, Francesco Berio, seems to have organized the act in three distinct numbers: a scena ed aria for Desdemona; a scena e duetto for Otello and Desdemona; and a finale following Desdemona’s murder. Desdemona’s scena on 295–​302). Lippe’s discussion focuses on the three diegetic songs embedded in act 3: the gondolier’s song, the Willow Song, and Desdemona’s preghiera. See also the account of act 3 and its nineteenth-​century reception in Ferruccio Tammaro, “Ambivalenza dell’Otello rossiniano,” in Il melodramma italiano dell’Ottocento: Studi e ricerche per Massimo Mila, ed. Giorgio Pestelli (Turin: Einaudi, 1977), 212–​33.

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  241 includes an arioso, “Nessun maggior dolore” (G minor→G major), set to lines from Dante’s Inferno and sung by a passing gondolier. The following duet has two movements, a tempo d’attacco and a cabaletta. Berio wrote two tercets of ottonari for a slow movement in which Otello and Desdemona would sing together; there is clear evidence in the autograph that Rossini composed and then deleted this movement.22 Its deletion accounts for the odd inclusion, in the opera as completed, of a tercet of ottonari at the end of the tempo d’attacco, within a duet that is otherwise composed exclusively of settenari. Of the act’s six parts, the only one that does not fit a traditional category is the last. I have labeled this part finale ultimo, but its musical form is free. It has the fluidity of a scena, but the texture is that of a parlante. The senario meter and regular rhyme scheme are audible, another indication that this is not a scena. There are three V–​I progressions between the end of one part and the beginning of the next. The parts labeled scena 1 and scena 2 link to the following movements by descending fifth, although each scena ends with a PAC. Desdemona’s romanza—​ Shakespeare’s Willow Song—​links similarly to her preghiera. Rossini connects the duet to the finale ultimo with a smooth orchestral transition, shown in durational reduction in example 7.13; each quarter-​note beat of the example represents one of Rossini’s notated measures. First the tonic note of D major is isolated; then a descending-​fifths sequence leads through G minor to B♭ major. The fortissimo B♭ chord represents the first of several knocks on the door by Lucio, who has come to tell Otello of Iago’s death. Smooth connections elsewhere leave Otello’s entrance—​the boundary between the preghiera and scena 2—​as the strongest point of musical disjunction in the act (example 7.14). The move is from A♭ major to C major, its upper sharp mediant. Rossini emphasizes C4 on both sides of the boundary, although the preghiera is accompanied by winds and brass and the scena begins with strings alone. The common-​tone relation helps to bridge what is otherwise a very distinct change, not only in key and orchestration but also in rhythmic character. Example 7.13.  Act 3, mm. 582–​98: Transition between movements V–​VI in durational reduction

22 Gossett discusses the missing slow movement in his introduction to the Garland facsimile. He points out that a cantabile for Otello and Desdemona would have been dramatically implausible at this point in the tragedy.

242  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 7.14.  Act 3, mm. 274–​77: From movement III to movement IV

Example 7.15.  Modulation from G minor to E♭ major in the Willow Song

If A♭ major is heard as the subdominant of E♭ (IVT), C major could theoretically be heard as E♭’s lower sharp mediant (VI♯T); the G minor of the romanza would be the diatonic mediant (iiiT). The transition from G minor to E♭ major at the end of the romanza is shown schematically in example 7.15, using Schenkerian notation. As if overmastered by despair, Desdemona’s song breaks out of its strophic mold and returns to E♭ through a sequence of three bass notes, D–​C–​B♭, all of which are treated as active dominants. Once a full cadence in E♭ has been reached, the song ends with the plagal cadence shown in example 7.12. The path from the end of the duet to the beginning of the finale ultimo was shown in example 7.13. Although the duet’s rejected slow movement does not survive, the two existing movements are both in D: D major for the tempo d’attacco, D minor→D major for the cabaletta.23 Both movements are harmonically static; unlike the tonally volatile romanza, they seem to make a point of not modulating. The duet forms an island of D tonality within the finale. D major is remote from E♭ major, and the duet is difficult to understand as emanating from the matrix of an E♭-​major triad.24 Example 7.16, a voice-​leading graph in two levels, shows how the return to E♭ is accomplished. It is not a simple matter of reinterpreting the B♭ of example 7.13 as V and returning directly. Rather, as was mentioned in ­chapter 6, the return is made through a G major triad that arrives in the guise of c:VA. This C-​minor half cadence is the culmination of a bass descent through two octaves; example 7.16a begins where example 7.13 leaves off. Over the longer range, represented by

23 The turn from D minor to D major for Desdemona’s final moments may have been inspired by the similar turn in the graveyard scene from Don Giovanni. 24 The image of the tonic triad as matrix comes from Carl Schachter, “Analysis by Key.”

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  243 Example 7.16.  Act 3, movements V–​VI: Two levels of voice-​leading reduction

7.16b, the bass, having descended from D to B♭, descends two additional thirds, D–​B♭–​G–​E♭; the example emphasizes the common tone, D. Three of these bass notes are strongly tonicized; G is dominantized. The progression could be interpreted as VII♯–​V–​III♯–​I in E♭ major, subdivided into two major-​ third descents a perfect fifth apart, VII♯–​V and III♯–​I. Because V and I are both major, a Schenkerian analyst might read this as an expanded V–​I progression in which V and I are each preceded by their own major third.25 What makes this interpretation unconvincing is that the D harmony is both very lengthy—​ encompassing the entire duet—​and very stable, whereas B♭ is relatively fleeting. The proposed analysis is not plausible.26 A scrupulous Schenkerian analyst will distinguish between a coherent path from one harmony to another and the composing-​out of a single harmony. The bass’s path in example 7.16 shows remarkable consistency; it is not only coherent but sequential. That G acts as gateway to E♭ recalls Desdemona’s romanza (G minor→E♭ major) and, before that, the gondolier’s song (G minor→G major). Perhaps one could say that G splits off from E♭ as its triadic third, returns after a long absence, and is reabsorbed into its source. But I do not claim, or wish to claim, that G is “prolonged”—​the usual, not-​quite-​accurate English translation of Auskomponierung—​throughout much of the act. Nor do I claim that the E♭–​G third at the act’s beginning and end constitutes a composing-​out of the E♭-​major triad.27 This would be to overlook too much that happens in between. 25 Compare Schenker’s remarks on the progression VII–​V in Free Composition, 89–​90 and fig. 111. 26 Patrick McCreless once complained of Schenkerian analysis that “it can’t not work” (review of Warren Darcy, Das Rheingold: Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure; 19th-​Century Music 18 [1995]: 277–​90; emphasis in original). McCreless’s remark has stuck with me as a valuable caveat. Sometimes a proferred Schenkerian reading so stretches musical hearing that it should be said not to work. 27 E♭ major ascends sequentially to G minor (iii) in mm. 10–​14 of the Prelude.

244  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 7.17.  Act 3, mm. 1–​57: Voice-​leading reduction

Example 7.17 is a bass-​line sketch of the first half of scena 1, from the beginning of the prelude to the gondolier’s song. The prelude (mm. 1–​20) and the first period of the scena (mm. 21–​32) are closed structures in E♭, but each aims at a G harmony somewhere along the way (see the asterisks in example 7.17). In the prelude, an ascending sequence leads I–​iiT–​iiiT (E♭–​f–​g) before a cadence, ii6–​V–​I, ensues to provide closure in E♭. In the first period of the scena, a C-​minor half cadence—​a cadence onto a G major triad—​comes about as part of a larger tonicization of C minor before, once again, a ii–​V–​I cadence in E♭ closes the harmonic circuit. The definitive modulation to G minor occurs when Rossini turns E♭ into a dominant, cadences deceptively onto F♭ (A♭:♭VI), then turns F♭ major into E major. From E major, a straightforward series of descending fifths leads to G major, which is soon changed to G minor. The second half of scena 1 and much of scena 2 resist Schenkerian analysis. This is not surprising: recitative often lacks the kind of musical coherence that one tends to find in more formally organized music. A large part of scena 2 might be viewed, if one squints hard enough, as composing out its initial C major harmony, which eventually ascends to the duet’s D major by means of D’s dominant, A. Similarly, the second half of scena 1, following the gondolier’s song, might be understood to compose out G major, which returns to G minor for the romanza by means of G’s dominant. In short, it is possible to map a plausible path through act 3. But, as I have already said, a path taken is not the same thing as an Auskomponierung accomplished. It would go too far, I think, to force the act into a prolongational master narrative in which E♭ major governs all other harmonies and keys. And while it would be easy to map the act’s harmonic stations onto Schoenberg’s chart of the regions28—​exactly as easy as it is to assign each key a Roman numeral—​it is hard to see what would be gained except a measure of fluctuating distance from the tonal center. That is not nothing, but does the center hold? I do not think that E♭ exerts so strong a centripetal force on the music of act 3. Once it has been left, E♭ returns twice, both times as an invitation from Rossini to mourn Desdemona’s 28 Schoenberg, Structural Functions of Harmony, 20.

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  245 fate. If G minor is a key of onstage mourning (first the gondolier, then Desdemona), E♭ major is where the audience is invited to mourn. It is not a matrix in Schachter’s sense but a color, a state of feeling, an aural/​emotional space in which plangent horn melodies and plagal progressions resound. Act 3 of Otello is not, in my opinion, Rossini’s greatest achievement in serious opera (I prefer act 2). But it is not difficult to understand why Schubert and his contemporaries found the act—​ and the rest of the opera—​so impressive.29

Fusion of Numbers Mosè in Egitto, Quartet We have already seen an example of formal fusion in the trio from La donna del lago: what begins as a four-​movement duet ends as a six-​movement trio to accommodate an additional character and an intensified dramatic situation. Despite the disruption, the trio returns to its initial key at the end. But there are examples in Rossini’s Neapolitan operas in which the expansion of a number, under the pressure of dramatic events, leads to a partial breakdown of tonal coherence. In act 2 of Mosè in Egitto, Pharaoh’s son Osiride takes the Hebrew Elcìa, to whom he is secretly married, into hiding outside the capital. His royal father wishes him to wed the princess of Armenia (!), but Moses and Aaron intend to take Elcìa with them in the Exodus. With the elders in both camps opposing him, Osiride sees no solution but an exodus of his own: he would rather give up the throne than Elcìa, and he naïvely envisions a future for himself as a simple shepherd. Unfortunately for him, Aaron (Aronne) has learned of Osiride’s plans and informs both Moses and Queen Amaltea, who is sympathetic to the Hebrews. Aronne and Amaltea set out to find the pair, whom they interrupt in flagrante duetto.30 In La donna del lago, Rodrigo enters the Elena–​Uberto duet during the cabaletta, by which point the music has already returned to its opening key. Amaltea and Aronne interrupt the Elcìa–​Osiride duet during its most unstable movement, the tempo di mezzo, and they turn it in an altogether new direction: from projected completion in E♭ major to actual completion in C major. The form and key structure of the Elcìa–​Osiride duet are unusual even before the adults take charge (table 7.7). E♭ was the key of the preceding number, an aria for Amaltea. The recitative that follows, in which Aaron informs Moses of Osiride’s 29 For Schubert’s assessment of Otello, see his letter of 19 May 1819 to Anselm Hüttenbrenner, cited in Otto Erich Deutsch, Schubert: A Documentary Biography (London: Dent, 1946), 117, document 149. 30 The autograph of Mosè in Egitto has been published in facsimile (New York: Garland Press, 1979). There is a useful discussion of the quartet by Doris Sennefelder in “Moitié italien, moitié français”: Untersuchungen zu Gioachino Rossinis Opern Mosè in Egitto, Maometto II, Moïse et Pharaon ou Le passage de la Mer Rouge und Le siège de Corinthe (Munich: Utz, 2005), 36–​41.

246  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 7.7.  Mosè in Egitto: The duet portion of the Scena e Quartetto Prelude and scena Cantabile (slow movement) Tempo di mezzo

E♭→G (=​E♭:I→III♯T) G (=​E♭:III♯T)

E♭→c:VA (=​E♭:I→III♯A)

Example 7.18.  Mosè in Egitto, act 2, Scena e Quartetto, mm. 15–​18

flight, ends with a PAC in G major.31 Typically for Rossini, this recitative is headed Dopo l’Aria Amaltea; it is understood to follow, rather than to introduce, a formal number. The orchestra then plays an elaborate prelude, signaling the beginning of a scena. A lengthy prelude promises a lengthy number, and this prelude is lengthy indeed, 44 measures in andantino tempo. Its length is needed to accommodate stage action: Osiride, holding a torch, leads the frightened Elcìa into a dark cavern. The prelude, with clarinet obbligato, is in E♭ major; the beginning of the clarinet theme is shown in example 7.18. Elcìa begins the scena in recitative, asking Osiride where he is taking her. Seeking to soothe her, he takes up example 7.18 in a passage of arioso. After further recitative, he sings a later segment of the clarinet melody, now in G major (it was originally in E♭). Soon afterward, the scena ends with a PAC in G major, much like the recitative dopo l’Aria Amaltea. The slow movement of the duet follows, its beginning and end firmly in G. Because this is the primo tempo—​the first movement that follows the scena, and the first composed to versi lirici—​its key of G major would normally have priority, according to the usual Rossinian criteria, as presumptive tonic of the duet. But this is a tonally closed slow movement, not a tonally open tempo d’attacco. Such a movement usually comes second in a duet, not first. When the tempo di mezzo begins in E♭ major with a quotation from the prelude’s coda (example 7.19, a and b), our hearing is likely to be revised: we hear not an advance to a new key but a return to an old one. Harmonically, the scena has substituted for a tempo d’attacco, establishing the main key of what, so far, is still a duet. The slow movement’s G major is now understood as a chromatic mediant, III♯T in relation to E♭ major. The link between scena and tempo di mezzo underscores the slow movement’s suspension of dramatic time and confirms, thematically as well as tonally, the status of the scena as the duet’s true beginning.

31 In the autograph, the recitatives between numbers are written in a different hand. They were probably composed by Michele Carafa, who also composed Pharaoh’s aria in act 1. See Charles Brauner’s preface to the critical edition (Pesaro: Fondazione Rossini, 2004).

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  247 Example 7.19.  The same, mm. 32–​34 (prelude) and 159–​65 (tempo di mezzo)

Elcìa is the first to hear footsteps, and the tempo di mezzo quickly turns from E♭ major to C minor. The text returns to versi sciolti as the texture becomes that of a parlante; Osiride remarks that either his father or Moses must have followed them. After arriving on c:V,32 the mode turns to major as Amaltea and Aronne 32 Elcìa’s vocal line, the falling fourth C5–​G4 (m. 182), suggests that a PAC in C minor is about to occur; compare the end of the scena (mm. 113–​14).

248  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 7.8. The Scena e Quartetto as a whole I. Duet, scena (with orchestral prelude) II. Duet, cantabile (slow movement) III. Duet, tempo di mezzo IV. Quartet, tempo d’attacco V. Quartet, concertato (slow movement) VI. Quartet, tempo di mezzo

E♭→G (=​E♭:I→III♯T) G (=​E♭:III♯T) E♭→c:VA

C→E♭→A♭:VA (=​C:I→♭IIIT) A♭ (=​C:♭VIT)

E♭→c:VA (=​C:♭IIIT→VA)

Duet, false cabaletta

c (=​C:i)

VII. Quartet, stretta

C (=​C:I)

enter, accompanied by guards. What ensues, after surprised recognitions all around, is a tempo d’attacco for the newly constituted quartet, including parallel melodic statements for Amaltea and Aronne, who hurl accusations at the young couple. Osiride and Elcìa reply in periods of their own: Osiride is proud and threatening, Elcìa despairing. Elcìa’s period is by far the longest and most ornate of the four. Each period ends with a PAC; the keys are, respectively, C, C, C→G, and E♭. It is initially unclear whether Elcìa’s E♭ major is to be heard as a return to the duet’s main key, to which C and G would relate as chromatic mediants, or if E♭ acts as a chromatic mediant to the movement’s opening key of C. Both are true to some extent, but the latter interpretation ultimately prevails. A listener’s construction of the number’s tonality is fluctuating and open to frequent revision en route. Table 7.8 diagrams the number as a whole. The dialogue portion of the tempo d’attacco adds a seventh to the E♭ harmony, turning it into an active dominant of A♭. The quartet’s slow movement, in A♭ major, follows as the poetic meter changes from settenario to senario.33 The tempo di mezzo continues the senario meter. It begins in E♭ major and leads to c:V, much as one might expect of a C-​major number that has been exploring regions to the flat side. What follows is a false cabaletta in C minor (example 7.20), still in senari and continuing the previous rhyme scheme, poetic indications that we have not yet left the tempo di mezzo. The sentiment, too, remains kinetic: Elcìa turns on Osiride and urges him to go serve the Egyptian state, whatever the personal cost to her. (Osiride’s hapless reply is to blame the gods.) Musically, though, the impression is that a duet cabaletta has begun: a closed period of twelve measures is stated by Elcìa and repeated by Osiride. Harmonically, the false cabaletta is an introduction to the real cabaletta, a Vivace in C major and decasillabo meter. Although this is technically a stretta, the form of a duet cabaletta is preserved by having Elcìa/​Osiride and Amaltea/​Aronne sing in pairs; there are no solo 33 This slow movement, “Mi manca la voce,” became the opera’s most celebrated piece after Mosè’s preghiera “Dal tuo stellato soglio.” Not surprisingly, both pieces were retained in Moïse et Pharaon (Paris, 1827).

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  249 Example 7.20.  The same, mm. 343–​55

statements. At the end, Elcìa is arrested by Aronne and Osiride by Amaltea. The young people exit their elders’ prisoners.34 Given the number’s pairing of E♭ and C, the most interesting passage in the stretta is the fortissimo outburst of E♭ major, reminiscent of Il barbiere, as the culmination of a crescendo near the end of each C-​major strophe (mm. 415 and 475). Such an outburst might have occurred if the entire number were in C major, but the interrupted duet casts this E♭ into a tonal twilight comparable to that of Elcìa’s E♭-​major period in the tempo d’attacco. There is no longer any uncertainty about the number’s main key: it is C major. But the incorporation of C:♭III creates the impression of a formerly secure key that has been overcome, much as the lovers’ escape has been overcome by the reality of their separate obligations. Several facts emerge from table 7.8. The duet’s three movements all end on a G-​major harmony, as does the tempo di mezzo of the quartet. As we know from 34 Sennefelder (39) also identifies seven movements in the number, but our formal readings differ. She regards the first eight measures of the andante, mm. 186–​93, as belonging to the tempo di mezzo rather than the tempo d’attacco: the poetic meter and rhyme scheme suggest that this is already the tempo d’attacco, as does the new key of C major. She says nothing about the false cabaletta or its key of C minor, but her measure numbers show it as part of a tempo di mezzo in E♭ major. The poetic form and meter support her reading of the false cabaletta; musical factors described above support mine.

250  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 7.21.  Harmonic outline of the Scena e Quartetto (based on table 7.8)

c­ hapter 6, a G-​major dominant triad at the end of a tempo di mezzo may lead to a cabaletta in any of three keys: E♭ major, C major, or C minor. That the two tempi di mezzi share the same tonal trajectory, E♭:I→c:VA, is especially interesting in this connection. Musically, one could follow the duet’s tempo di mezzo with the false cabaletta (example 7.20), linking together all of the number’s duet portions, although this would make little sense dramatically. Example 7.21 translates table 7.8 into musical notation. Only beginnings and endings are shown; common tones are indicated with ties. G belongs to every harmony except the A♭ major of the concertato, which is also—​characteristically for a slow movement—​the harmony furthest to the flat side. The three V–​I motions lead to C major, A♭ major, and C minor respectively. The example makes it easy to see how deeply Rossini has intertwined the keys of E♭ and C. The concertato’s A♭ major makes sense as both E♭:IVT and C:♭VIT; both regions are standard for a Rossini slow movement, although by this point in his career ♭VIT is more typical. The repeated progression from E♭ to G fits both E♭ major (I–​III♯) and C major (♭III–​V), but it fits C minor best of all (III–​V). This is one reason why the false cabaletta, in C minor, feels real when it begins. Rossini’s attitude toward the loose structure of the Scena e Quartetto is evident in his revision of Mosè in Egitto for Paris, where, to a new libretto, the opera became Moïse et Pharaon, ou Le passage de la Mer Rouge (Moses and Pharaoh, or The Passage of the Red Sea), in four acts instead of three. The quartet was broken up, with three of its movements retained and four discarded. Movement V, the concertato, appears in its original key of A♭, but it becomes the slow movement of the E-​major finale to act 3, acting as upper sharp mediant of E (III♯T) rather than lower flat mediant of C (♭VIT). Movements I–​II were retained, more or less intact, to form the duet that opens act 4. But what follows movement II is a reprise of the march of the Hebrews, a jaunty piece in C major that plays the same role in Moïse et Pharaon that the Trojan march would later play in Berlioz’s Les Troyens. The ability of the progression E♭–​G to proceed to either E♭ major or C major is realized in a telling manner.

Maometto II, Terzettone In his article on Rossini for The New Grove, Philip Gossett devotes a paragraph to the immense trio—​741 measures, not including the scena—​in act 1 of Maometto II (1820). The opera, set in present-​day Greece, tells of a real event: the fall of Negroponte, a Venetian possession, to the Ottoman conqueror Mehmed II in 1470.

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  251 Perhaps the most remarkable number in these [Neapolitan] operas is the first-​act ‘terzettone’ (as Rossini called it) in Maometto II, ‘Ohimè! qual fulmine’. Practically the longest unit in the opera, this number shows in the extreme how Rossini expanded internally standard forms. The ensemble begins as if it were to be a simple trio, with a static section followed by a kinetic one. Though normally this would address a concluding cabaletta, here a cannon shot announces Maometto’s impending siege, and Anna, Erisso and Calbo leave the stage. As the scene changes, the ‘trio’ is left incomplete, but the music continues into a chorus and solo prayer for Anna. Erisso and Calbo return, and with the members of the initial trio reassembled, they launch a typical four-​part design that concludes with a cabaletta to bring the entire scene to completion. The whole composition is tonally closed, with the initial ‘Ohimè! qual fulmine’ and concluding cabaletta ‘Dicesti assai! t’intendo’ both in E major. Tonal closure is essential to Rossini’s technique, and helps unify his expanded ensembles. Though this terzettone, which fills more than a third of Act 1, incorporates many different dramatic events and musical sections, it clearly represented a unit for Rossini and must be heard as such to make formal sense. To break it up into a ‘Scena e Terzetto’, ‘Scena’, ‘Coro’, ‘Preghiera’ and ‘Scena e Terzetto’, as in standard vocal scores of the opera, is to substitute chaos for an effective and coherent plan. This is an extreme but characteristic example of Rossini’s efforts to incorporate more musical material and dramatic action into the individual number. Though the number remains sectional, these sections define a larger design, as the composer expands, almost to the limits of intelligibility, the possibilities of those formal patterns he had established earlier as basic elements in Italian operatic structure.35

In her book on the French revisions of Rossini’s Italian operas, Doris Sennefelder provides an informative account of Maometto II: its libretto; its relation to Cesare della Valle’s Anna Erizo; the probable influence of Spontini’s Fernand Cortez, conducted by Rossini earlier the same year; the opera’s revision for Venice; and its heavily recomposed French version, Le siège de Corinthe (1826). She also diagrams several of the opera’s numbers, including the terzettone. The diagram in table 7.9 is my own, but my divisions of the trio resemble Sennefelder’s.36 Movements labeled as “closed” end with one or more PACs in the key in which they began. What promises to be a three-​movement trio, lacking an initial tempo d’attacco, disintegrates in the face of a surprise Ottoman attack: two characters, the Venetian governor Erisso (Anna’s father) and his general Calbo, exit hurriedly to defend the fortress. After movement IIc, the scene changes from Anna’s chamber to a public square outside a church, where Anna leads the Negropontese women in prayer.37 When Erisso and Calbo return at the beginning of movement IV, the battle has been lost; Erisso has come to give Anna a dagger with which to kill herself. A four-​ movement trio ensues (V–​VIII), although its stretta resembles the cabaletta of an 35 Gossett, “Rossini, Gioachino,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980); republished 2001 in Oxford Music Online. 36 Compare Sennefelder’s chart in “Moitié italien, moitié français,” 127–​29. 37 The change is from a “short” to a “long” scene. It would involve the raising of a drop curtain to reveal an already-​prepared stage set. Gossett, Divas and Scholars, 248.

252  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 7.9. Rossini, Maometto II, act 1, Terzettone I.

Cantabile 1 (Anna, Calbo, Erisso; quinario)

II.

Tempo di mezzo 1 (trio, then Anna and chorus)

E (closed)

a. Allegro (trio, interrupted by cannon; settenario)

A (cut off mid-​phrase)

b. [same tempo] Orchestral interlude

C becomes F:VA

c. Recitative (Anna; versi sciolti)

F→a (ends a:PAC)

CHANGE OF SCENE d. [tempo as before] Chorus and Anna (settenario) III. Preghiera (Anna and chorus; quaternario and ottonario) IV. Resumption of tempo di mezzo 1, becoming scena

V.

d→D (closed) f♯ (closed)

a. Orchestral interlude (transposition of IIb)

D becomes G:VA

b. Recitative (Anna and Erisso; versi sciolti)

G→B:VA

Tempo d’attacco (Anna and Erisso; settenario)

B→G:VA

VI. Cantabile 2 (Anna, Calbo, Erisso; settenario)

G (closed)

VII. Tempo di mezzo 2 (Anna, Calbo, Erisso; settenario)

G→e:VA

VIII. Cabaletta (Anna with chorus and pertichini; settenario)

E (closed)



E→C:VA (leads to c:i in No. 4)

Postlude becomes transition to No. 4

aria con pertichini (Erisso and Calbo are the pertichini). Here Anna expresses her understanding of her situation and her resolve to escape the Turks through death if necessary. The dramatic fluidity of the terzettone is its most remarkable feature. It is almost unheard of for a single number to include a change of stage scene, as this one does. Moreover, the number does not really end: the orchestral postlude modulates, moving from E major to its hexatonic pole, C minor, as the Christian soldiers leave, the women disappear into the church, and Turkish horsemen enter with Mehmed/​Maometto at their head. The modulation is shown in example 7.22. In neo-​Riemannian terms, the series of chord-​and-​key changes (the two are nearly identical here) can be symbolized as PRN =​HEXPOLE.38 After the opening passage in C minor, another P transformation leads to C major, the main key of the Turkish chorus. Equally extraordinary are the moments of discontinuity. The most obvious is the offstage cannon shot that derails the first tempo di mezzo (example 7.23). More subtle is the way that movement IV picks up where movement II left off, on the tonic harmony of D major (example 7.24). The orchestral crescendo that opens 38 For a review of neo-​Riemannian operations, see ­chapter 3.

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  253 Example 7.22.  Maometto II, nos. 3–​4: Harmonic outline of the transition between numbers

Example 7.23.  Terzettone, mm. 86–​96

movement IV is an exact transposition, a whole step higher, of the one that follows the cannon shot in movement II (compare examples 7.23 and 7.24). What this means is that the preghiera, the opera’s most memorable melody, acts as an interpolation within a single, extended tempo di mezzo. In other words, movements II and IV together constitute a multi-​part tempo di mezzo with a static movement sandwiched in between. Once Erisso and Calbo have rejoined Anna, the ongoing tempo di mezzo turns into a scena (movement IVb) for the more conventional four-​movement trio that follows. How does a listener know that movements V–​VIII do not constitute an independent number? Because, as Gossett would have pointed out, movement V is in B major, not E major. We know that movement VIII completes the tonal circuit, and with it the terzettone, if we recognize E major as the key of movement I. As Gossett remarks in the quotation above, Rossini here stretches “almost to the limits of intelligibility” the conventional structures that he himself did so much to establish.39 39 Some scholars have questioned the originality of the formal conventions instantiated in Rossini’s operas. See Scott Balthazar, “Mayr, Rossini, and the Development of the Opera Seria Duet: Some Preliminary Conclusions,” in I Vicini di Mozart, Vol. I: Il teatro musicale tra Sette e Ottocento, ed. M. T. Muraro (Florence: Olschki, 1989), 377–​98; also Senici, “Rossinian Repetitions.”

254  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 7.24.  The same, mm. 233–​39 and 285–​88

The parallel between movements II and IV extends further than this. Except for the mode at the end, the following patterns are transpositions of each other: ( 1) C becomes F:VA, then F→a (a:PAC) (2) D becomes G:VA, then G→B (B:PAC) Pattern 1 describes the music from just after the cannon shot (movement IIb) through the end of the following recitative (IIc). Pattern 2 describes the music from the chorus (movement IId), and from movement IVa, through movement V, not including the latter’s post-​cadential transition to G major. A difference not evident from this explanation is that the F-​major tonic is actually sounded, albeit briefly, in movement IIc (m. 117), whereas the G-​major tonic in movement IVb is merely implied by the unaccompanied resolution from C to B, 4̂–3̂, in m. 308 (example 7.25). Once the orchestra re-​enters with B major instead of G major, the harmonic motion of the number’s second half—​the complete solita forma—​has begun.40 Placing movement VI in G major satisfies the Rossinian convention that the slow movement of an ensemble be set in one of the flat chromatic mediants. G major is LFM (♭VIT) to B major and UFM (♭IIIT) to E major; it fits both small-​and large-​scale contexts. The key of the other slow movement, Anna’s preghiera, is F♯

minor, which is iiT of E major—​hardly a normal choice for a slow movement—​but also iiiT, the diatonic mediant, in relation to the D-​major music that surrounds it. The tenuous place of the preghiera within the number’s tonal plan made it easy for Rossini to detach it from act 1 and attach it to the very end of Le siège de Corinthe, creating an effective closing number (no. 15, Scène, Prière, et Final III). The fact that the first four chords of the preghiera/​prière enact an A-​major cadence (example 7.26) becomes newly relevant here, because Final III is in A minor/​ major. The French opera retains a trio in act 1, but it is much reduced in scope. 40 Unaccompanied cadences in recitative are especially characteristic of Bellini. See c­ hapter 9.

  Tonal Coherence in Rossini’s Italian Operas  T  255 Example 7.25.  The same, mm. 305–​10

Example 7.26.  The same, mm. 240–​43 (beginning of the preghiera)

Movement I of the original terzettone is followed by movement IIb and a heavily recomposed IIc, which leads directly to the original movement VIII. The three-​ movement design—​slow movement (E major), tempo di mezzo (modulating), cabaletta (E major)—​resembles that of an aria.41 One can argue for tonal unity in the terzettone if one wishes; as a token of analytical earnestness, I make that argument in graphic form in example 7.27, which comprises two levels.42 I make the case with some reluctance, however, because in this number centrifugal forces seem to outweigh the centripetal, despite the return to E major for Anna’s cabaletta. For one thing, the number explores many regions to the flat side of the main key, venturing as far as the one-​flat system (F major and D minor); but it moves only one fifth to the sharp side (B major). The 41 For further information on Le siège de Corinthe see Gossett, “The Operas of Gioachino Rossini,” 471–​84, and Sennefelder, 169–​242. 42 In e­ xample 7.27, each of the eight movements is headed with a boxed Arabic numeral. Roman numerals represent harmonies. Following traditional Schenkerian practice, all Roman numerals in example 7.27 are upper-​case. The reason is explained in Rothstein, “Schenker and the Fundamental Bass,” in New Horizons in Schenkerian Research, ed. Allen Cadwallader et al. (Hildesheim: Olms, 2022), 1–​20.

Example 7.27.  Terzettone, voice-​leading graph

258  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera plan shown in 7.27a features several descending fifths, leading from E major (movement I) to A major (movement II) to D major (movements II and IV). G major, the next fifth in the descending series, is briefly suggested in movement IVb (example 7.25), but it does not appear in the graph, or in orchestral sound, until movement VI. The F♯ minor of the preghiera is here understood as the upper third of D major, returning to its source once the prayer has ended. With movement V the journey takes a decisive turn to the sharp side. B major appears first as a tonic, then as a dominant (end of movement VII), before E returns to close the structure. Much as F♯ minor is enclosed by D major in movements II–​IV, G major is enclosed by B major in movements V–​VII; in both cases, the returning harmony loses its tonic status to become an active harmony in another key. And whereas the upper-​major-​third relation of movements II–​IV stabilizes the third of the source triad, the lower-​major-​third relation of movements V–​VII introduces a tone not contained in the source. That tone, G♮, might be understood in terms of the Schenkerian transformation known as the 5–​6 shift, or 5–​6 exchange, in relation to B. G major also offers yet another way, besides E major and B major, to harmonize the note B in the upper voice. As with the Otello finale, my proffered reduction of the terzettone seems more convincing as a pathway traced than an Auskomponierung experienced. Of course the trio’s harmonic path could be traced using other methods, including Schoenberg’s regions, Lerdahl’s tonal pitch spaces, or neo-​Riemannian Tonnetze. To a highly trained ear—​or one with absolute pitch—​the return to E major may be recognizable, although Rossini asks a great deal of his listener if he expects such recognition. It may be safer to regard the final E major as a terminating convention, to borrow a term from Pieter van den Toorn, than as the seal of an “organic” structure that Schenker would have recognized.43 That tonal return within a multi-​movement number has become optional—​as it is in the Mosè quartet and, arguably, in other numbers analyzed in this chapter—​ implies that its absence has become a viable option. It is an option that composers younger than Rossini explored avidly, beginning even before Rossini’s retirement. Before we consider those composers, however, we must move our study to Paris for Rossini’s final opera, Guillaume Tell.

43 Pieter van den Toorn, The Music of Igor Stravinsky (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 331.

C HA P T E R

Eight

Guillaume Tell

From Lully to Saariaho, France has imported many of its composers of serious opera. Yet if Lully is excluded, foreign composers dominated the genre for less than a century, from the arrival of Gluck to the death of Meyerbeer. During those nine decades (1773–​1864), foreigners who lived in Paris for extended periods included Gluck, Piccinni, Sacchini, Cherubini, Spontini, Rossini, and Meyerbeer; all of these were Italian except Gluck and Meyerbeer. Composers who stayed for shorter periods and set French libretti included Salieri, Donizetti, and Verdi. Still others, including Paër and Bellini, set Italian libretti for the Théâtre-​Italien. The categories are by no means exclusive: during the 1839–​1840 season, operas by Donizetti were performed almost simultaneously at the Opéra (Les martyrs), the Théâtre-​Italien (Lucrezia Borgia), the Théâtre de la Renaissance (Lucie di Lammermoor), and the Opéra-​comique (La fille du régiment), much to the annoyance of Hector Berlioz.1 French influence on Italian opera was equally profound. French plays provided the basis for countless Italian libretti, including those to Rossini’s Tancredi and Semiramide, both based on Voltaire. Dramatic and musical values emanating from Paris helped to shape eighteenth-​century operas by Traetta, Jommelli, Cimarosa, and Mozart, among others. Napoleon’s conquest of Italy had lasting effects, including a permanent ban on castration. Rossini’s Neapolitan operas—​especially Ermione, Maometto II, and Zelmira—​can hardly be imagined without the French occupation, which brought to Naples operas such as Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide and Spontini’s La vestale and Fernand Cortez.2 In short, neither French nor Italian opera of the early nineteenth century can be regarded as culturally separate. Each helped to shape the other.

Rossini in Paris Rossini moved to Paris in 1824. Between 1825 and 1828, he presented four new or substantially revised operas to the French public, one in Italian and three in French. Il viaggio a Reims (1825), a comic opera in Italian, was written Berlioz, Journal de débats, 16 February 1840; quoted in William Ashbrook, Donizetti and His Operas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 146. Berlioz was no chauvinist; his heroes were Gluck and Spontini. 2 For a list of operatic performances in Naples between 1651 and 1881, see Francesco Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli e suoi conservatorii, Vol. IV (Naples, 1881). 1

The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0009

260  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera for the coronation of Charles X and received four performances at the Théâtre-​ Italien, of which Rossini was then director. Il viaggio was revived twice in the nineteenth century, each time to a different libretto. Its autograph then disappeared until the 1970s, and the opera remained unpublished until 1999.3 Le comte Ory (1828), a comic opera in French, borrows about half its music from Il viaggio. Le siège de Corinthe (1826), a tragédie lyrique, was a reworking of Maometto II, with much existing music jettisoned and new music added.4 Moïse et Pharaon (1827) similarly transformed Mosè in Egitto, augmenting the theme of religious-​national liberation and the role of Moses while reducing the love interest. All of Rossini’s French-​language operas were created for the Opéra, whose subscribers tended not to frequent the Théâtre-​Italien.5 By the time of Guillaume Tell, Rossini had become accustomed to the conventions of French operatic composition and the peculiarities of the Opéra, where rehearsal periods were long, scenic values counted as much as musical ones, and ballets were de rigueur in any opera of three or more acts.6 Indeed, the musical style of Tell is as much French as it is Italian.7 Its closest relative among Rossini’s Italian operas is La donna del lago, another drama of armed rebellion in a lacustrine landscape. One difference between the operas is political: La donna del lago portrays Scotland’s King James as legitimate and magnanimous; in Tell, the Austrian governor Gesler is evil incarnate.8 Guillaume Tell was composed in two parts. Acts 1–​2, minus the overture and the divertissement, were completed by the end of 1828. Acts 3–​4 were not begun until early 1829. After numerous delays and lengthy rehearsals, Tell premiered at the Opéra on 3 August.9

3 The story of the loss and rediscovery of Il viaggio a Reims is told in Gossett, Divas and Scholars, 152–​58. 4 See the discussion of the act 1 trio in ­chapter 7. Tragédie lyrique was the genre to which the serious operas of Rameau, Gluck, and Spontini belonged. 5 See Steven Huebner, “Opera Audiences in Paris 1830–​1870,” Music & Letters 70 (1989): 206–​35; 217. 6 On French operatic culture during this period, see Mark Everist, Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-​Century Paris (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), ­chapter 1. 7 Benjamin Walton writes, “The French style of Rossini that would lead onto the style of Meyerbeer can be traced back to Spontini, the spirit of compositional experimentation to Méhul and others in the 1790s.” Walton, Rossini in Restoration Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 293. Berlioz identifies borrowings from Spontini in his review of Guillaume Tell, discussed in this chapter. On the experimental aspect of Méhul’s operas of the Revolutionary period see M. Elizabeth Bartlet, “Etienne Nicolas Méhul and Opera during the French Revolution, Consulate, and Empire: A Source, Archival, and Stylistic Study” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1982), ­chapter 14. 8 The Habsburg emperor, Albert I (d. 1308), is mentioned only in act 3, and there ambiguously: Austrian soldiers proclaim his severity, but Mathilde, a Habsburg princess, rescues Tell’s son from Gesler “in the name of the emperor.” 9 On the compositional history of Guillaume Tell and the many changes made both before and after its premiere, see the preface to M. Elizabeth Bartlet’s critical edition of the full score (Pesaro: Fondazione Rossini, 1992).

  Guillaume Tell  T  261 Example 8.1.  Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, “Rans des Vaches”

More than any other Rossini opera, Guillaume Tell possesses a distinctive musical coloration—​what Abramo Basevi would later term a tinta generale (“general color”). There are multiple aspects to its tinta, but most of them relate to Rossini’s attempt to make the opera sound Swiss.10 One of Rossini’s musical sources was the ranz des vaches, or cowherd’s song, which was published in Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de musique as an example of Swiss national music. Rousseau defines the ranz (also spelled rans) as “A song famous among the Swiss, played on pipes [Cornemuse usually refers to bagpipes] by cowherds as they tend livestock in the mountains.”11 Example 8.1 gives the melody as it appears in Rousseau’s Dictionnaire. The ranz contributes several elements to the melodic style of Tell; Berlioz identifies some of them in his 1834 review of the opera.12 One feature is an 10 See Anselm Gerhard, “‘Schweizer Töne’ als Mittel der motivischen Integration: Gioachino Rossinis Guillaume Tell,” in Schweizer Töne: Die Schweiz im Spiegel der Musik, ed. Anselm Gerhard and Annette Landau (Zürich: Chronos, 2000), 99–​106. 11 “RANZ-​DES-​VACHES. Air célèbre parmi les Suisses, & que leurs jeunes Bouviers jouent sur la Cornemuse en gardant le bétail dans les montagnes.” Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1768), 398. Rousseau uses the spellings Rans and Ranz interchangeably. On the Swiss theme in Tell, Rossini’s use of the ranz des vaches, and much else, see Walton, “Looking for the Revolution in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell,” Cambridge Opera Journal 15 (2003): 127–​51; reprinted with minor changes in Walton, Rossini in Restoration Paris, c­ hapter 8. 12 An English translation of this important document appears in Leo Treitler, ed., Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 1125–​41. Before writing his review, Berlioz proofread the score for the Parisian publisher Troupenas. That he learned the opera from the Troupenas score is significant; it permitted him to get a sense of the work as a whole as well as in detail. In his review, he frequently comments on cuts made in recent performances at the Opéra, some of which he must have heard.

262  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera emphasis on the fifth degree of the scale, which is often used as a reciting tone in the vocal lines. Another is the double-​neighbor motion around 5̂ (Berlioz: “the composer turns about the fifth step of the scale with tiresome persistence, as though it held for him an almost irresistible attraction”). A third feature is the use of melodic arpeggios based on notes of the tonic triad, such as can be performed on the alphorn, bagpipes, and other naturally tuned instruments. All of these elements are readily found in example 8.1. A feature of the ranz not mentioned in Berlioz’s review is the chromatic alteration of the fourth degree. In a letter written before he could have known Tell, Berlioz noted that “the instruments used by Swiss shepherds pitch the fourth of the scale too high.”13 Rousseau’s transcription has a tonic of D but a signature of three sharps; its mode could be described as Lydian. The French composer Grétry domesticated this aspect of Rousseau’s transcription when he used it, harmonized but otherwise unchanged, at the opening of his own Guillaume Tell, an opéra comique (1791). Grétry’s ranz lies entirely within the major scale, as does an independently transcribed version by the Italian violinist G. B. Viotti (1755–​1824).14 Benjamin Walton has identified transformations of the ranz in melodies from Tell, but he focuses almost entirely on act 1.15 An earlier study by Anselm Gerhard takes the other acts into account; example 8.2 is based on Gerhard’s study.16 The first passage (8.2a), played by horns in E and G, is labeled le ranz des vaches in the score; the others are obvious derivatives. The final appearance of the ranz (8.2e) was identified by Berlioz: it is the orchestral theme that accompanies the closing hymn to liberty. As Berlioz writes, “The ranz des vaches floats gracefully above these massive chords and the hymn of Swiss liberty floats upward to heaven, calm and imposing, like the prayer of a just man.” Berlioz is an equally good guide to Tell’s harmonic idiosyncrasies, some of which appear in his own music. Chief among these is what Fétis termed a “unitonic effect”: a juxtaposition of triads, especially root-​position triads, in which each has the effect of a tonic.17 Especially “unitonic” are juxtapositions in which no triad is clearly subordinated to another—​progressions by second or third, either diatonic or chromatic. Berlioz singles out for praise “the diatonic [i.e., stepwise] succession

13 Berlioz, letter to his sister, November 1828, quoted in Julian Rushton, The Musical Language of Berlioz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 47. The eleventh partial is, indeed, closer to an augmented than to a perfect fourth. Jeremy Day O’Connell discusses the ranz des vaches in Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth Century to Debussy (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 68–​71. 14 George Tarenne includes Rousseau’s and Viotti’s versions, among several others, in his Recherche sur les Ranz des vaches (Paris, 1813). Tarenne stresses that different versions of the ranz were performed in different Swiss cantons with respect to both words (if any) and music. A version that Tarenne ascribes to Théodor Zwinger (1658–​1724) uses both the natural and raised fourth degrees. 15 Walton, “Looking for the Revolution,” 138–​41 and exs. 1–​6. 16 Gerhard, “ ‘Schweizer Töne.’ ” 17 Fétis’ harmonic theories are discussed in ­chapter 2.

Example 8.2.  Guillaume Tell: Five melodies based on the ranz des vaches

a. Act 1, Introduction (no. 1), mm. 210–​46 b. Act 2, Récitatif et Romance Mathilde (no. 9), mm. 1–​3 c. Act 2, Final (no. 12), mm. 3–​5 d. Act 4, Air Arnold (no. 18), mm. 233–​36 (melody only) e. Act 4, Final (no. 19), mm. 221–​23 (orchestral melody)

264  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera of triads in parallel motion” that ends a chorus of shepherds near the beginning of act 2. The four triads, all in root position, are C–​B–​a–​G; in Roman-​numeral terms, this is IV–​III♯–​ii–​I (the piece is in G major). The modal effect of this progression is reminiscent of music that Berlioz would compose years later, especially L’enfance du Christ (1854). As Berlioz points out, Rossini’s harmonic juxtapositions often revolve around a single common tone that is highlighted, and often isolated, in the melody. This is not a new technique for Rossini, as we know; we have seen it in operas as early as Tancredi (­example 6.11). One of Fétis’ examples of “modern” unitonic practice is from Guillaume Tell: it is the same fall by major third, from one major triad to another, as in the passage from Tancredi.18 Another harmonic feature of Tell is the recurrence of a motive in the same key, regardless of the keys preceding and following. Returning to the same key for a referential motive is an obvious precursor to Wagner’s leitmotif technique in the Ring; the “Sword” motive, for example, is associated not only with the trumpet but with the key of C major. The remainder of this chapter surveys acts 1–​2 in some detail, acts 3–​4 more briefly. The famous overture, which was composed last, is considered as part of act 1. During rehearsals in July 1829, Rossini cut or rearranged a good deal of music, but most of the cuts affected acts 3–​4. Except for dance music and recitatives, acts 1–​2 survived largely intact.

Overture and Act 1 The first act of Tell is the longest, taking over an hour in performance. Except for its finale, the act contains little dramatic action. Tell’s village, on the shores of Lake Lucerne, is celebrating a triple wedding. All seem happy except Tell, a husband and father, and Arnold Melcthal, son of the village elder. Tell cannot forget the Austrian tyranny even for a moment, and he wishes his compatriots were as discontented as he. Arnold is secretly in love with the Habsburg princess Mathilde, whom he saved from an avalanche. Tell notices Arnold’s discomfort, doubts his commitment to the Swiss cause (with good reason—​Arnold has fought for the Austrians), and goads him into a none-​too-​convincing pledge of loyalty. The wedding is celebrated with a divertissement of choruses and dances. Then Leuthold, a wounded rebel, appears, in flight from the Austrians; Tell rows him to safety across the stormy lake. Arriving in pursuit, Austrian troops arrest old Melcthal, whom they will later murder. Table 8.1 outlines act 1 as it was rehearsed in July 1829. Titles of numbers are taken from the critical edition; some numbers are not named in the autograph. Although this is a French opera, I use the customary Italian terms for movement-​ types. Principal keys are given both for entire numbers and for individual 18 Fétis, Complete Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Harmony, 160. The passage comprises mm. 166–​71 from the Arnold–​Guillaume duet in act 1.

Table 8.1.  Guillaume Tell, act 1 Overture. e→E I. Andante: e→E II. Allegro (storm): e (ends e:VA) III. Andante: G

IV. Allegro vivace: E (with interior episodes in c♯ =​ viT)

No. 1. Introduction. G→e→E→G

I. Chorus (Andante grazioso): G II. Quartet (Andantino): C III. Orchestral transition (Andantino; Allegretto): C→E→G→e (ends e:VA) IV. Chorus (Allegro vivace): e V. Chorus (Maestoso): E→G→E VI. Chorus (Allegro vivace): G No. 2. Récitatif et Duo (Arnold–​Guillaume). [G→C] E♭ [Recitative: G→E♭→C/​c (ends c:VA)] Tempo d’attacco: E♭→G♭; D→F→A♭

Tempo di mezzo: f→E♭ (ends E♭:VA) Cabaletta: E♭

No. 3. Marche, Récitatif et Chœur. C; F I. March (orchestra): C [Recitative: C→d] II. Chorus: F [Récitatif après le Chœur. F→g→E♭→G→a (ends a:VA)]

No. 4. Chœur dansé. a→A Divertissement: F; C No. 5. Pas de six. F

No. 6. Chœur dansé. c→C [Récitatif après le Divertissement. d→a→C→e (ends e:VA)] No. 7. Final 1er: e→G→E I. Chorus (Allegro con spirito): e→E→B (=​E:VT) II. Concertato (Andantino): G (=​E: ♭IIIT) III. Tempo di mezzo: G→e/E IV. Stretta: E

266  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera movements. Recitatives are regarded as neither movements nor numbers; their keys are given in square brackets. The act, including the overture, divides into four parts based on key. Part 1, the overture and Introduction, pairs the tonics E and G, with E appearing in both modes and G always major. In the resulting trio of keys, G/​e/​E, B is the tone common to all three tonic triads.19 Each number is tonally closed, but part 1 as a whole is open, beginning in E minor and ending in G major. Numbers 3–​6 form part 3, in which the wedding is celebrated. These numbers move from C to F (no. 3), then from F back to C (nos. 5–​6), with an A-​minor chorus in the middle (no. 4, ending in A major). C is the principal common tone.20 The finale (no. 7) stands alone as part 4. It returns to the original trio of keys and roughly duplicates the tonal path of the overture. No. 2, the Arnold–​Guillaume duet, constitutes part 2 and represents the act’s tonal outlier. Its principal key, E♭ major, is the key of the hunting music that recurs throughout the act. The same key will begin and end act 2. Most of the duet’s secondary keys lie to the flat side of E♭ major, further emphasizing the contrast with the remainder of act 1. The emphasis on common tones begins in the overture, as example 8.3 demonstrates. The note B4, emphasized by a solo cello in the opening Andante (8.3a), is an especially important link. The B major triad, simultaneously E:V and G:III♯, mediates between the two tonics. B lies atop the texture at the end of movement II (8.3b) and in the return to G major in movement III (8.3c). B4 is also the pitch of the trumpet signal that introduces the last movement (8.3d), smoothing an otherwise abrupt change from G:I to E:I. Example 8.4 offers a voice-​leading graph of the overture, highlighting the role of B. Although the fourth movement pairs E major with C♯ minor, bringing G♯ to the fore as a common tone, the climax near the end (mm. 419 and 443) occurs on B6 in the first violins, flute, and piccolo. In the chorus that opens the Introduction (example 8.5), B4 plays much the same role that it plays in the overture’s slow movement, linking the key of G major with an E minor that is often implied by its dominant. But the role of B as melodically central becomes clearest in the ranz des vaches—​so labeled—​between movements II and III (see example 8.2a). Played by four horns, two each in G and E, the ranz has as its ambitus the octave B3–​ B4. Although the passage is monophonic, four different triads are implied: E major, B major, G major, and E minor, all of them linked by the registral boundaries on B. In other words, while E and G are tonics, B is melodically central. The separation of melodic from harmonic

19 “Trio of keys” is introduced in Rothstein, “Common-​tone Tonality in Italian Romantic opera.” I list keys within a trio in such a way as to maximize the number of common tones between adjacent tonic triads. In most cases I use the order relative major–​minor–​parallel major. This ordering rarely reflects the order in which keys occur in real time. 20 In the version of the opera performed at the premiere (3 August 1829), the key scheme of the act’s central division read thus: C–​F–​a–​A (nos. 3–​4), G-​e-​G–​E–​C (divertissement, ending with no. 6). The divertissement featured the same keys as the Introduction (no. 1), but the retention of nos. 3 and 6 ensured that C major bookended the section.

Example 8.3.  Overture: Four excerpts that emphasize the note B

a. mm. 1–​5 (movement I, beginning) b. mm. 171–​80 (end of movement II and beginning of movement III) c. mm. 204–​10 (movement III) d. mm. 226–​43 (movement IV, beginning)

Example 8.4.  Overture, voice-​leading graph

  Guillaume Tell  T  269 Example 8.5.  Introduction (no. 1), mm. 86–​97 (voices omitted)

centricity is an important aspect of nineteenth-​century opera, as we saw in ­chapter 1.21 The scena of the Duo (no. 2) introduces a new and competing group of keys, one centered on E♭ major. Hunting horns are heard in the distance. Arnold recognizes the sound of Gesler and his men, and he knows that Mathilde is with them. Even before he hears the horns, Arnold touches on E♭ major at his first entrance, when he laments his inability to wed Mathilde. When Arnold speaks of the shame brought upon him by his service to the Austrians, there is a remarkable modulation from E minor to E♭ major (example 8.6a). A cadential progression begins, conventionally enough, on i6 of E minor (m. 64). The bass ascends from 3̂ to 4 ̂, G to A, with a Neapolitan sixth on 4 ̂. Keeping A in the bass, the chord changes to a diminished seventh. (D♯ is respelled as E♭, but the listener cannot know this yet.) The diminished-​seventh chord on 4 ̂ could have ascended to a diminished-​seventh chord on ♯4 ̂, as in the hypothetical example 8.6b (compare example 8.9a, where this progression actually occurs). But the pitch level has sunk: instead of A♯ representing ♯4 ̂ as in the recomposed version, A♮ assumes this scale-​degree function. What follows, instead of a cadential 64 in E♭, is an E♭-​major triad in root position—​ the hunting horns.22 For now, an association has been forged: sharper tonal realms belong to the Swiss, keys with three or more flats to the Austrians.23 The duet, in which Tell tries to uncover Arnold’s secret, begins on Arnold’s psychological territory, the state of being “happy and guilty at the same time (heureux et coupable à la fois).” The number abbreviates la solita forma by omitting a slow movement. The tempo d’attacco is remarkable, anticipating duets in Donizetti and, especially, Meyerbeer. Rossini departs from his usual procedure of giving each character an extended solo period, with dialogue coming afterward. 21 Berlioz (1129–​30) praises “the rare felicity of the scale from the B in the middle register to the high B which the soprano spreads obliquely against the harmonic background.” 22 On transformations of scale-​degree functions, see Steven Rings, Tonality and Transformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 23 The association does not hold for very long. By the finale of act 2, the Swiss have claimed E♭ major for themselves.

Example 8.6.  Act 1: A striking modulation in the scena of the Duo (no. 2)

a. mm. 63–​70 b. mm. 64–​70, recomposed to end in E minor

  Guillaume Tell  T  271 Example 8.7.  Act 1, Duo, mm. 195–​200

Here, dialogue in parlante texture comes first; solo statements, in aria texture, are limited to extended asides by Arnold.24 The movement consists of two parallel sections, the first modulating upward by minor third (E♭→G♭), the second by two consecutive minor thirds (D→F→A♭). The sections are identical in length (78 measures), and each section is constructed as a bar form, AAB; Arnold’s solo constitutes the B strain or Abgesang.25 Arnold’s solos raise the vocal tessitura while increasing the flatward trajectory. The two bar-forms might be said to substitute for the paired periods of a typical Rossinian tempo d’attacco, but what follows is the tempo di mezzo, led again by Gesler’s horns. Throughout the duet, Arnold seeks to evade Tell’s scrutiny. When Tell urges him to steel himself for the cause of liberty, Arnold escapes into a rapturous, G♭-​ major apostrophe to the absent Mathilde; this is the Abgesang of the first bar form.26 As extreme flats often do, Arnold’s shade into sharps: his G♭ is re-​notated as F♯, and this F♯ is dominantized by the Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol schema (example 8.7, m. 197).27 In typical Rossinian fashion, VA of a minor key (B minor) leads not to i but 24 On aria and parlante textures, see Moreen, 27–​30. Moreen’s account is based on Basevi, whom he quotes at length. 25 “Bar form” is a better description than “sentence” owing to the lengths involved and the strengths of internal cadences. On Meyerbeer’s use of bar form in Les Huguenots, see ­chapter 10. 26 See Hugh MacDonald, “[G♭ Major, 9/​8 Meter],” 19th-​Century Music 11 (1988): 221–​37. 27 At the parallel m. 276, following the cadence in A♭ major, the string figure is 2̂–​1̂–​7̂–​1̂ in A♭, with a whole step above A♭ and a half step below it.

272  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera to I of the relative major: D major, beginning the second bar form. If we are still hearing the music in flats, this D major is “really” E♭♭ major, a key with nine flats.28 The boundary between tempo d’attacco and tempo di mezzo is ambiguous, but it is convenient to place it after Arnold’s second solo, the end of the second bar form. At the beginning of the tempo di mezzo, a passage of recitative, shown in example 8.8a, seems to lead toward a cadence in C minor; the projected cadence is shown in 8.8b. On the way to the expected cadence, the orchestra lands on a diminished-​seventh chord on A♮ (m. 285). We have been here before: the situation Example 8.8.  Act 1, Duo, tempo di mezzo

a. mm. 282–​89 b. mm. 282–​87 recomposed to end in C minor 28 Compare the Cavatine in the love duet from Les Huguenots, where a move from G♭ major to D major also occurs. The passage is discussed in ­chapter 10.

  Guillaume Tell  T  273 resembles example 8.6, although there the expected cadence would have been in either E minor or E♭ major. Once again, the diminished-​seventh chord leads not to a cadential 64 but to the hunting horns in “their” key of E♭. This time, Tell and Arnold both understand that Gesler’s men are approaching. I skip over the cabaletta, which is conventional except in its division of vocal labor. As before, Tell avoids all aria-​like singing, while Arnold revels in it. Walton associates Tell’s avoidance of extended lyricism as a generic signal; in his view, Tell’s declamatory style represents the old tragédie lyrique. More likely, Rossini intended Tell’s musical reticence as another “Swiss” characteristic, corresponding to the stereotype of the Swiss as serious and undemonstrative. The wedding scene (nos. 3–​6) consists mostly of dances, some of which include choral singing. The first section of no. 3 returns as the last section of no. 6. For all the changes that no. 3 underwent during rehearsals and the initial performances, the opening march was never cut; nor was no. 6. The musical enclosure of the wedding scene in C major seems to have been a fixed part of Rossini’s conception. In the Récitatif après le Divertissement, Leuthold rushes in and begs to be rowed to the far shore to escape the Austrian soldiers, one of whom he has killed; the soldiers’ cry for vengeance is heard in the distance. A fisherman refuses, citing the oncoming storm, but Tell agrees. The orchestral motive underlying the recitative is based on diminished-​seventh chords, which suggest the keys of D minor, A minor, and (twice) E minor. A C-​major cadence separates the two E-​minor statements. The finale (no. 7) then begins over a long B pedal, V of E minor. The finale is the most Italianate part of act 1. From a tonal perspective, its primary feature is the return to the trio of keys from the first part of the act, and thus to the pairing of E and G. G major appears as the key of the concertato, representing the upper flat mediant (♭IIIT) of E major. That this is a conventional key choice for Rossini is familiar from ­chapters 6 and 7.

Act 2 Act 2 takes place on the heights of the Rütli overlooking Lake Lucerne. It unfolds over a single night, from just before sundown to just before dawn. As the curtain rises, we see the hunting party that we heard from a distance, sporadically, throughout act 1. It is a splendid group of men and women, led by Austrian soldiers. Its  hunting music (shown earlier in example 8.6a) sounds fortissimo from the opening measures, played now by the full orchestra but with horns prominent. The key is once again E♭ major. The hunters sing of their joy at seeing their prey, a chamois, draw its last breath. Even the storm on the lake enchants them. A bell sounds from offstage, tuned to the note G. It is the signal for Swiss herders in the nearby mountains to return to their village for the night. They sing a quiet chorus in the pastoral key of G major, upper sharp mediant to E♭, accompanied by harp and the recurring bell. It is at the end of this chorus that the progression in parallel triads noted by Berlioz occurs. Rossini’s intent may have been to reproduce the sound of improvised part-​singing practiced in some parts

274  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera of Switzerland. A hunter, referring to the herders’ “monotonous voice (la voix monotone),” leads back to E♭ major through a conventional series of descending fifths (mm. 186–​92; the Austrians seem to have had some conservatory training). The hunting music resumes and fades away as the party leaves to rejoin Gesler. The chorus (no. 8) has reinforced the association of E♭ major with hunting and the Austrians, G major with pastoralism and the Swiss. By the end of the act, the dramatic associations of the opera’s sharp/​flat dichotomy will become muddied. Table 8.2 summarizes act 2. The use of G as a linking pitch extends beyond no. 8 to no. 10, the Mathilde–​ Arnold duet. Expressions of love (movements I–​ II) are followed by serious business: Mathilde urges Arnold to pursue military glory so that others will see him as worthy of her; he agrees (movements III–​IV). G is the common tone between the duet’s C major and E♭ major, just as it is the common tone between the keys of E♭ and G in the opening chorus. Example 8.9 shows four passages from the duet in which G is highlighted. Movements I and III begin with a unison G in horns and trumpets (8.9a and d). In 8.9d, the beginning of the tempo di mezzo, G acts simultaneously as E♭: 3̂ (m. 182 is the final cadence of the slow movement), G: 1̂ (G is intermittently tonicized), and C: 5̂ (G becomes a dominant pedal). In movement I, each character’s solo period is punctuated by a double-​neighbor figure surrounding G (8.9b). In movement II, G receives considerable melodic emphasis as E♭: 3.̂ Most interesting, perhaps, is the passage shown in 8.9c, where Mathilde, soaring to a fortissimo G5 (m. 125), sings a descending G-​major arpeggio after having just lowered E♭: 6 ̂ from C to C♭ (spelled B♮ in the violins). Two horns sustain the dyad D4–​F4 throughout mm. 124–​26, helping to tonicize C minor within the E♭-​major slow movement. Another melodic feature links nos. 8 and 10: the ascending leap from 5̂ to 3̂ in major (example 8.10). When the opera is heard in real time, these sixth-​leaps seem to derive from the yodeling sixths of the overture’s slow movement—​itself related to the ranz des vaches—​and the main theme of its famous finale. Each passage in example 8.10 stands at the beginning of a movement. Beginning with Mathilde’s romance (no. 9), a different organizational principle begins to emerge in the opera: major-​third cycles. The number begins with an orchestral prelude in C minor, while the romance “Sombre forêt” is in A♭ major, a major third lower. In the following recitative, Arnold approaches Mathilde, who has been expecting him. He believes that she merely pities him, and he laments the apparent hopelessness of his love. He asks her to send him away. Revealing her own unhappiness, she asks him to stay. At this point the duet begins. The Récitatif après la Romance begins with an orchestral prelude in E major, a major third below the A♭ of the romance. After a good deal of tonal wandering, the duet begins in C major. From the beginning of no. 9 to the beginning of no. 10 there is a complete cycle of major thirds, c–​A♭–​E–​C. Because any complete major-​ third cycle blurs the distinction between major thirds and diminished fourths, it also blurs the distinction between sharps and flats: E major could also be heard as F♭ major, ♭VIT of A♭ major.

Table 8.2.  Guillaume Tell, act 2 No. 8. Chœur. E♭→G→E♭

Austrians (hunters): E♭

Swiss (herders): G (=​E♭:III♯T) Austrians (hunters): E♭

No. 9. Récitatif et Romance Mathilde. [c]‌A♭ [Prelude: c, ending c:VA]

[Recitative: c→D♭→A♭:VA] Romance: A♭

[Récitatif après la Romance Mathilde. E→c:VA] No. 10. Duo [Mathilde–​Arnold]. C→E♭→C

I. Tempo d’attacco: C (beginning C:VA)–​E♭ II. Slow movement: E♭ (=​C:♭IIIT)

III. Tempo di mezzo: G pedal becomes c/​C:VA IV. Cabaletta: C [Récitatif après le Duo. d:VA→E] No. 11. Trio [Arnold–​Guillaume–​Walter]. A→E→A I. Tempo d’attacco: A; then a→G→e:VA II. Slow movement: E (=​A:VT) III. Tempo di mezzo: a (ends a:VA) IV. Stretta: A No. 12. Final 2e: F→E♭

I. Moderato (men of Unterwald; includes refrain): F [Recitative: F/​f→A♭:VA]

II. Andantino (men of Schwyz): A♭ (=​F:♭IIIT) [Recitative: A♭→F (refrain), then to C]

III. Moderato (mostly orchestral): C→F (refrain) IV. Allegro vivace (men of Uri): a→B♭:VA

[Recitative 1: B♭→D♭→f♯→e–​G→a:VA, then chromatic ascent E→E♭] [Recitative 2 (Tell and all the Swiss men): E♭→g]

V. Serment (oath): Andantino maestoso: E♭

Example 8.9.  Act 2, no. 10: Four passages centered on G

a. mm. 63–​65 of the Récitatif après la Romance plus m. 1 of the Duo b. m. 23 (violins and high winds) c. mm. 123–​31 d. mm. 182–​86

  Guillaume Tell  T  277 Example 8.10.  Ascending major sixths in no. 8 (Chœur) and no. 10 (Duo)

a. No. 8, mm. 46–​49 (choral parts only) b. No. 10, mm. 3–​4 c. No. 10, mm. 112–​15 d. No. 10, mm. 217–​19 To make matters more complicated, the recitative includes a different major-​ third cycle internally (example 8.11). The F♯ that opens this smaller cycle (mm. 39–​40) functions as V in a B-​minor half cadence (Mathilde asks: “Has my [fate] been happier?”). The next step is to D major, a local tonic, at mm. 45–​46 (Arnold: “The daughter of kings must get to know me”). The unison D drops to a unison B♭, which itself drops another major third to the root of a G♭-​major triad; G♭ then acts as D♭:IV in a plagal cadence (mm. 49–​50). These last moves occur as Arnold claims that his union with Mathilde is ordained by Heaven. From Mathilde’s unhappy question to Arnold’s bold claim, F♯/​G♭ has been transformed from active dominant in B minor to active subdominant in D♭ major, with a complete cycle of major thirds in between. After the duet, Mathilde flees at the approach of Tell and Walter. In the tempo d’attacco of the trio (no. 11), the two patriots inform Arnold that the Austrians have murdered his father; Walter himself witnessed the crime. In the slow

Example 8.11.  Récitatif après la Romance, mm. 38–​49

  Guillaume Tell  T  279 Example 8.12.  Act 2, Trio

a. mm. 100–​1 b. mm. 106–​7 movement, singled out by Budden as an outstanding example of Rossini’s French manner,29 Arnold reacts to the news (example 8.12). Singing in the bright key of E major, he repeatedly juxtaposes the triads ♭VI (C major) and I over a tonic pedal (8.12a), but he also sings “J’expire” (“I die”) to a dominantized III♯ (G♯ major) that returns directly to I (8.12b). Together, E major’s LFM and USM invoke the same major-​third cycle as the progression from no. 9 to no. 10: C–​E–​A♭/​G♯. The same interval cycle will play a large role in act 3 and, above all, in act 4. In the celebrated finale (no. 12), the men of three cantons join Tell on the Rütli and swear to fight to the death for Swiss independence. The tonal structure of this finale is difficult to interpret, but an attempt is made in example 8.13. Eighth-​note flags indicate local dominants. Movements I–​III form a closed unit in F major. Returns to F are marked by recurrences of a short choral refrain, “Honneur à leur presence! (Honor to their presence!),” by which the men greet each cantonal militia as it arrives. Movement IV is in A minor, but it features prominent Neapolitan harmonies (B♭ major) and 29 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:12.

280  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 8.13.  Act 2, Final, reduction (bass only)

Example 8.14.  Act 2, Final, mm. 316–​25 (voices omitted)

plays on the enharmonic equivalence between a:Ger6 and B♭:V7. The following recitative begin, logically enough, on B♭:I, and it finds its way to a:V7. The progression between these points is detailed in example 8.13; it includes an enharmonic change within a descending-​fifths pattern, D♭–​F♯–​B–​E.30 Without the notational change, the E minor that ends the pattern would appear as F♭ minor. A few measures later, E returns as the root of a:V7, suggesting imminent return to A minor. At this point the tempo increases and a chromatic sequence begins (example 8.14). The sequence ascends eleven semitones from E to E♭, tonicizing in turn G major, A minor, B minor, D♭ major, and E♭ major, a series of ascending whole tones. Just before the sequence ends, the tritone in a:V7, G♯3/​D4, returns as A♭3/​ D4 (see the asterisks in the example). A♭/​D implies E♭:V7. On a larger scale, a:V7 at the beginning of the passage (m. 317) resolves to E♭:I at the end (m. 325), acting in effect as an augmented-​sixth chord on F♭. This might be regarded as an early example of tritone substitution, a technique usually associated with jazz and other post-​1900 music. 30 The original version of the recitative, found in Appendix IV of the critical edition, executes the same progression as the abbreviated final version.

  Guillaume Tell  T  281 Example 8.15.  Act 2, Final, movement 5 (Serment): Reduction of mm. 337–​54

Once reached, E♭ major yields to G minor to end the recitative. E♭ is then resumed at the beginning of the final movement, the serment (oath-​taking). The progression that follows, unfolding at a rate of approximately eight seconds per chord, is shown schematically in example 8.15.31 The chords are paired, and each pair except the last can be heard as either a plagal cadence or a motion from a tonic to its major dominant. Although the serment contains some striking chromaticism, including a Berlioz-​like emphasis on ♭ 7̂, the key of E♭ is never seriously challenged. The Swiss have appropriated E♭ major, horns and all, from their Austrian overlords. In the two remaining acts, E♭ major loses any fixed dramatic association. Gesler sings in E♭ major in the act 3 finale (no. 17), but E♭ is also the key of Arnold’s “Asile héréditaire” (no. 18, primo tempo), which he sings after he has accepted leadership of the rebellion.

Act 3 Table 8.3 outlines act 3 as it stood at the beginning of rehearsals. Numbering follows that of the critical edition, but I have designated the parts of the finale (no. 17) differently.32 The peculiar numbering in the divertissement reflects the fact that the ballet underwent multiple changes during July and August: some segments were moved to act 1 and others were cut. The order given here is the original one, so far as is known.33 If the opera’s overture is regarded as part of act 1, act 3 is the only act that begins and ends in different keys. The key scheme resembles that of act 1. There were at least two tonal strategies at work in that act: the trio of keys G/​e/​E and the C/​ F pairing. Both recur in act 3, but they are joined by a third mode of organization: a major-​third cycle. Two parts of act 3, Mathilde’s aria (no. 13) and the Divertissement up to its Final, use the trio of keys from the beginning and end of act 1. E is the main tonic of no. 13, G that of the divertissement excepting its Final. C major, which is subordinate to G in no. 15a, has greater importance in no. 13, being both the first key of Mathilde’s scena and the main key of her tempo di mezzo. 31 The meter is  , the metronome marking 60 to the quarter note. The initial tonic harmony lasts four measures, the subsequent harmonies mostly two measures each. 32 In the critical edition, some recitatives are numbered as independent movements. 33 See M. Elizabeth Bartlet’s notes to the critical edition.

282  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 8.3.  Guillaume Tell, act 3 No. 13. Scène et Air Mathilde. [C]‌e→E [Prelude: C] [Recitative: C→e:VA] I. Primo tempo (Allegro agitato): e→E→G II. Tempo di mezzo: c:VA→C→a→E:VA III. Cabaletta: e→E No. 14. Marche et Chœur. C; F; C [Récitatif après la Marche et le Chœur. F→C] Divertissement: G→C No. 16. Pas de Soldats. G No. 5bis. Pas de deux. E; A; E No. 15a. Pas de trois et Chœur tyrolien. e→G:VA, then G→C→e→G No. 16bis. Final du Divertissement. C→a→C→F→C No. 17. Final 3e. E→[C]‌→A♭→f→F

[Récitatif après le Divertissement: A♭:VA→e:VA] I. Quatuor: E→e→G→E

[Récitatif après le Quatuor: C→c]

II. Air Jemmy: A♭

III. Récitatif et Air Guillaume: f

[Recitative: A♭→b♭→f:VA] Air: f→b♭→B♭; b♭→f

Orchestral transition: f→c:VA

IV. Récitatif et Final 3e: [C→F:VA] F→C→F

[Recitative: C→D♭→A→F, ending F:VA]

Tempo d’attacco: F, ending F:VA; then A♭→c:VA Concertato: C



Transition: C becomes f:VA



Stretta: F

Numbers 14, 16bis, and much of the final (no. 17) alternate the tonics F and C, like the wedding scene in act 1. But in the final F is often F minor, especially in Tell’s aria “Sois immobile,” whereas in the wedding scene F was, of course, major.

  Guillaume Tell  T  283 The opening sections of the final—​the single-​movement quartet, the following recitative, and Jemmy’s two-​tempo aria—​are organized around the major-​third cycle E–​C–​A♭, which we first encountered in act 2, nos. 9–​10. The quartet’s E major also provides a link to Mathilde’s aria and the pas de deux of the divertissement, although the dramatic reason for this recurrence is unclear. A different and perhaps better way to divide the act follows the scenic divisions of the libretto. Only Mathilde and Arnold are onstage in scene 1 (no. 13), which takes place indoors and has E as its principal tonic. No. 14 opens scene 2, a massive outdoor scene in which Gesler celebrates his power and subjects the Swiss to multiple humiliations. This scene extends through the end of the divertissement, forming a closed unit in C major. Within scene 2, the three named dances—​pas du soldats, pas de deux, and pas de trois—​form a closed unit in G major, with E major as the most important secondary key. The final du divertissement then returns to C major. The keys of C major, E minor and major, and G major dominate the music of scene 2. Even the C major of no. 14 is repeatedly accessed from harmonies of E minor or E major. Example 8.16 translates the harmonic structure of scenes 1–​2 into musical notation. The final (no. 17) encompasses scenes 3–​4; example 8.17 provides a bass-​line sketch. Scene 3 begins when soldiers detain Tell and his son Jemmy for refusing to bow to Gesler’s hat. The finale’s opening movements, based on the major-​third cycle, seem to act as large-​scale preparation for the F minor of Tell’s aria, “Sois immobile.” Given the order E–​C–​A♭–​C, with the final C dominantized, it may not be too much of a stretch to interpret the entire cycle as dominant-​functioning in relation to F minor. From here to the end of the act, movements in F alternate with movements in C. Each tonic is prepared by its own dominant: after Tell has shot

Example 8.16.  Bass-​line reduction of scenes 1–​2 (nos. 13–​14 plus the Divertissement)

284  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 8.17.  Bass-​line reduction of scenes 3–​4 (no. 17)

the apple from atop Jemmy’s head, the celebratory C major that opens the Récitatif et Final 3e is thus prepared; so are the following tempo d’attacco (F major), the concertato (C major), and the brief stretta (F major).

Act 4 Act 4 was cut more than any other, both before and after the premiere. Two lyrical movements were eliminated, a trio for female voices and a prière for Tell’s wife Hedwige. The only lyrical movement that remained was the cantabile of Arnold’s aria. As a result, act 4 became both very short and very rapidly paced, the antithesis of the opera’s long and leisurely first act. As before, it is the original version of the act that is analyzed here. Table 8.4 summarizes this version. Harmonically, act 4 is organized around the same major-​third cycle that we encountered in acts 2–​3. The main key of Arnold’s aria (no. 18) is C, that of the trio (no. 19) A♭, that of Hedwige’s prière (no. 20, part 1) E. The route thus traveled, C–​ A♭–​E, is reversed in the finale proper (no. 20, part 2), which moves E–​A♭–​C. The act ends on C, the tonic with which it began. Significantly, the tonal plot of no. 18 seems to include the scena—​the same departure from Rossini’s usual practice that we saw in the quartet from Mosè in Egitto (­chapter 7). The scena begins in C minor. Arnold’s cantabile is in E♭ major, ♭IIIT of the ultimate key of C major. The tempo di mezzo begins in A♭, ♭VIT. These relationships are only clarified once the cabaletta has established C major as the goal; until then, the keys heard are either diatonic or chromatic regions of C minor.

  Guillaume Tell  T  285 Table 8.4.  Guillaume Tell, act 4 No. 18. Récitatif et Air Arnold. [c]‌E♭→C [Prelude: c]

[Recitative: c→e♭:VA] I. Cantabile: E♭

II. Tempo di mezzo: A♭–​c:VA III. Cabaletta: C

[Récitatif après l’Air Arnold. f→C, which becomes f:VA] No. 19. Trio. A♭

No. 20. Final 4e. [d]‌ e/​E→C I. Récitatif, Prière Hedwige et Chœur: [d→e:VA] e→E

[Recitative: d→g→a→e:VA]



Prière: e→E

II. Final 4e: E→[A♭]→C

[Recitative: E→B]



Storm: E→C:deceptive cadence to ♭VI (=​A♭)



[Recitative: A♭ becomes D♭:VA (=​A♭)] Chorus (soldiers): D♭ to D♭:VA (=​A♭)

[Recitative (Tell kills Gesler): A♭→E/​e→C, ending c:VA] Sunrise (Tell and chorus): C

Sequential harmonic motion plays a large role in act 4. The clearest example is the “sunrise” chorus that ends the opera. The chorus follows a strictly sequential path, the bass descending by alternating minor and major thirds in a way reminiscent of Beethoven’s Variations in F Major, op. 34 (1802). A comparison of the two pieces’ tonal pathways is shown in example 8.18.34 Beethoven’s tonics follow the F-​major diatonic collection except for the seventh degree, where he substitutes E♭ for E♮ (the diatonic triad on 7̂ is, of course, diminished). On the other hand, Beethoven preserves the major mode for all but the penultimate key, introducing chromatic triads, in relation to F major, on D (6 ̂) and G (2̂) as well as E♭. He also moves directly from VA to I, C to F, bypassing A (3̂) in his chain of thirds. 34 See the remarks on Terzen-​Ketten (chains of thirds) in William Kinderman, The Creative Process in Music from Mozart to Kurtág (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 5–​7.

286  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 8.18.  Act 4, Final: The “sunrise” chorus compared to Beethoven’s op. 34

Rossini initially hews more closely to his diatonic collection, that of C major, by alternating major and minor modes, I–​vi–​IV–​ii. Like Beethoven, he lowers 7̂; having done so, he follows the diatonic collection of the parallel minor: VII–​v–​ III–​i, completing the cycle of thirds by including 3̂ of C minor. Like Beethoven, Rossini avoids preparing any key except the final tonic with its own dominant. Once C minor has been reached, Rossini’s bass twice descends 8̂–​♭7̂–​6̂–​♭6̂–​5̂, confirming C in a traditional way while retaining elements of the minor mode. (Beethoven also uses the tonic minor in his coda.) The minor-​mode coloration of the chorus makes the final C major seem hard-​won, like Swiss liberty. Rossini uses the contrast of C minor and C major to similar purpose at the end of Mosè in Egitto; the dramatic parallel is obvious. Earlier in the finale, three consecutive pieces—​the storm, the recitative, and the soldiers’ chorus—​end on the same triad, A♭ major. When another well-​placed arrow from Tell sends Gesler tumbling dead into the lake, pianissimo A♭ major is followed by fortissimo E major (example 8.19), another effect reminiscent of Mosè in Egitto and its French version, Moïse et Pharaon. E major later changes to E minor, which in turn moves to C major through an inverted dominant. The finale, like act 4 as a whole, moves primarily within a single hexatonic collection, which in George Perle’s notation would be labeled C40,3; Richard Cohn calls this the “Northern system.”35 Perle’s labels are more informative, and I shall use them from now on. C4 (for “interval-​4 cycle”) refers to an equal-​interval cycle in which the interval replicated comprises four semitones—​either a major third or a diminished fourth. The numerical subscripts refer to specific interval-​4 cycles: C–​ E–​A♭ is C40 because pitch-​class C =​0; E♭–​G–​B is C43 because D♯ =​E♭ =​3. The lowest pitch-​class number in the cycle is chosen to represent the cycle. The comma between 0 and 3 represents the union of two interval cycles of the same type. The hexatonic collection C40,3 comprises pitch-​classes 0, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 11, or {C, E♭, E, G, A♭, B}. These include all of the pitch-​classes in the tonic triads of C major, C minor, E major, E minor, A♭ major, and A♭ minor. Rossini uses all of these keys in act 4 except A♭ minor. 35 Perle’s symbols for interval cycles appear in most of his writings after 1980, including “Scriabin’s Self-​Analyses,” Music Analysis 3 (1984): 101–​22. I prefer to use only the lowest possible subscript numerals for interval cycles; hence I prefer C40,3 to C43,4. For Cohn, see “Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-​Romantic Triadic Progressions,” Music Analysis 15 (1996): 9–​40; 17.

  Guillaume Tell  T  287 Example 8.19.  Act 4, Final, original version, mm. 377–​81 (=​final version, mm. 154–​58)

Example 8.20.  Rossini, Le siège de Corinthe, act 3, Scène et Air avec Chœur, mm. 22–​43 (reduced)

Although mediant and common-​tone relations form an important part of Rossini’s musical language throughout his career, this aspect of his style becomes more pronounced in his Neapolitan operas, and more pronounced still in Guillaume Tell. His use of major-​third cycles, which we saw in Zelmira, re-​emerges in the newly composed portions of Le siège de Corinthe (1826), most notably in the passage summarized in example 8.20. Here the Greek elder Hiéros blesses the flags of Corinth’s doomed defenders and pronounces them martyrs, in a scene that surely inspired the Blessing of the Daggers in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. Rossini’s sequence exhausts the hexatonic collection C40,3 in that each of its tonics—​C, A♭, and E—​appears in both modes; the tonic of each major key becomes minor to serve as iiiA of the next major tonic.36 While the tonics, shown as whole notes in 36 The year of Le siège de Corinthe, 1826, was also the year of Schubert’s String Quartet in G Major, D. 887, which features prominent major-​third cycles in its first movement. Schubert’s quartet went unperformed until 1850 and unpublished until 1851, so Rossini could not have known it.

288  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera the bass, move through the major-​third cycle C40, the upper voice of example 8.20 moves through the “even” whole-​tone scale, C20. In addition to its use of major-​third cycles, a significant feature of Guillaume Tell is the way that Rossini contrasts a recurring flat key, E♭ major, with a group of four sharp or neutral keys—​the trio of keys G/​e/​E plus C major, whose tonic triad includes E and G. This quartet of keys dominates much of acts 1 and 3, while E♭ major bookends act 2 and the Arnold–​Guillaume duet in act 1. This manner of opposing “soft” and “hard” keys anticipates similar oppositions in several of Verdi’s operas.

PART III

Between Rossini and Verdi Giovanni Pacini (1796–​1867) was Rossini’s successor as musical director of the royal opera houses in Naples, and he soon assumed leadership at La Scala in Milan, holding both posts simultaneously for a number of years. As an opera composer, Pacini achieved outstanding success in the 1820s and again in 1840 with his best-​ known opera, Saffo. In later years he was somewhat dismissive of his early operas, writing in his memoirs that he had been an imitator of Rossini: “Everyone followed the same school, the same fashions, and as a result they were all imitators, like me, of the great luminary. But, good heavens, what else could one do if there was no other way to make a living?”1 Pacini was the master of the interregnum. His greatest successes occurred during two brief periods: the first, between Rossini’s relocation to Paris in 1824 and the rise of Bellini and Donizetti around 1830; the second, between the death of Bellini and the rise of Verdi. Pacini’s operas are not covered in these pages, but his late-​life cri de cœur captures the situation in which Italian composers found themselves in the century’s second quarter. Everyone built on Rossini’s foundation while modifying it (if they could) to suit their artistic personalities without losing the next commission. Initially it was Bellini, a southerner, who got away with artistic lèse-​majesté. His simpler but more expressive vocal style, especially in La straniera, was hailed by compatriots as a return to the ideals of the Neapolitan school after the depredations of the northern interloper.2 Donizetti, a northerner, built on Bellini’s contribution and turned it in a dramatically more intense direction that readmitted Rossinian virtuosity, as Bellini himself would do in his later operas. After Bellini’s death in 1835, Saverio Mercadante produced a series of highly original operas, beginning with Il giuramento. Donizetti and Mercadante 1 Pacini, Le mie memorie artistiche, 2nd enlarged edition, ed. Ferdinando Magnani (Florence, 1875), 54: “tutti seguirono la stessa scuola, le stesse maniere, per conseguenza erano imitatori, al par di me, dell’ Astro maggiore. —​Ma, Dio buono! come si faceva se non vi era altro mezzo per sostenersi?” Translation adapted from Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:9. 2 See, e.g., Gary Tomlinson, “Italian Romanticism and Italian Opera: An Essay in Their Affinities,” 19th-​Century Music 10 (1986): 43–​60; 52. Bellini’s link to the Neapolitan school, especially Paisiello, was already a staple of criticism during the composer’s lifetime; see, e.g., Liborio Musumeci, Parallelo de’ due maestri Bellini e Rossini (Palermo, 1832).

290  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera both contributed to a certain freeing-​up of musical forms in ways that recognizably serve the drama. Early Verdi often feels stiff by comparison. Then there was Meyerbeer, whose early success on Italian stages gave only a hint of the frenzy to come in Paris. Leading Italian composers could and did hear Meyerbeer at the Opéra during the 1830s, but the importation to Italy, around 1840, of Robert le diable and Les Huguenots marked the beginning of a more cosmopolitan attitude among Italian audiences, especially in the north. Rossini had left the stage, with a lifetime pension, by the time of Robert le diable. It was left to Mercadante, Donizetti, and Verdi to absorb the lessons of grand opéra, and to Verdi alone, among Italians, to surpass the new great luminary while he lived.

C HA P T E R

Nine

Bellini and the New Diatonicism

In the middle decades of the twentieth century, it was fashionable to view nineteenth-​ century music as a story of increasing chromaticism. Each generation—​so the story went—​wrote music that was more chromatic than the generation before, leading to a crisis of the tonal system and its inevitable dissolution. This narrative stemmed primarily from Arnold Schoenberg and his followers. First, in Schoenberg’s telling, came the collapse of the distinction between parallel major and minor, resulting in a reduction from twenty-​four keys to twelve “chromatic modes” defined by their tonics alone. Eventually the tonics themselves withered away, leaving the equal-​ tempered chromatic scale as sole survivor of the harmonic Götterdämmerung.1 Convenient as this narrative was to Schoenberg’s purposes, it was one-​sided in the extreme. Of the many composers who contradict it, one is Vincenzo Bellini (1801–​1835). Bellini’s music is more diatonic than Rossini’s, yet it posed a greater threat to monotonality.2 Despite Bellini’s importance to later composers, including Chopin and Wagner, he has been neglected in histories of nineteenth-​century compositional technique. Italian Bellini studies have burgeoned under the leadership of Fabrizio Della Seta, founding editor of the Bollettino di studi belliniani, which at this writing comprises six issues; his monograph on Bellini appeared as this book was going to press.3 But the most influential Bellini scholar of the postwar period was the German musicologist Friedrich Lippmann (1932–​ 2019). Lippmann’s PhD dissertation helped to establish nineteenth-​century Italian opera as a legitimate specialty in German musicology; Michael Wittmann has described it as breaking a taboo.4 A revised version of the dissertation appeared in 1969 as part of the series Analecta musicologica; a second revision, in Italian, appeared in 1981 alongside a biography by Maria Rosaria Adamo.5 Lippmann’s analyses tend to focus on melody, rhythm, and form, all on a small scale.6 His analytical scope rarely extends 1 Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, 3rd ed. (1922), trans. Roy E. Carter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). See especially 387–​88. 2 The term “monotonality” is Schoenberg’s, used especially in Structural Functions of Harmony. 3 Fabrizio Della Seta, Bellini (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2022). 4 Michael Wittmann, “Das Bild der italienischen Oper im Spiegel der Kritik der ‘Leipziger allgemeinen musikalischen Zeitung’,” in Le parole della musica, Vol. II: Studi sul lessico della letteratura critica del teatro musicale in onore di Gianfranco Folena, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro (Florence: Olschki, 1995), 195–​226; 222. 5 Lippmann, Vincenzo Bellini und die italienische Opera seria seiner Zeit. Analecta musicologica 6 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1969); Maria Rosaria Adamo and Friedrich Lippmann, Vincenzo Bellini (Turin: RAI, 1981). See Julian Budden’s review in Music & Letters 64 (1983): 244–​46. 6 Too small, according to Philip Gossett. See his review in Journal of the American Musicological Society 24 (1971): 301–​6. The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0010

292  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera beyond the individual pezzi chiusi or “closed pieces” that form the building blocks around which complete operatic numbers are constructed. “Casta diva” is a typical pezzo chiuso: it is a self-​contained piece, in a single key and tempo, with complete closure at its end.7 But it constitutes only the first movement, or primo tempo, of Norma’s entrance aria. Julian Budden complains, rightly, that Lippmann says too little about Bellini’s harmony.8 In fact, Bellini’s handling of harmony was little short of revolutionary. Bellini was an early practitioner of what David Kopp has termed common-​tone tonality—​the use of common-​tone relations, rather than functional progression or monotonality, as a basis for harmonic succession or large-​scale tonal relations.9 The analysis of Verdi’s Anvil Chorus in ­chapter 1 of this book demonstrated common-​tone tonality. The term classical tonality may be used to describe the harmonic language familiar from monotonal theories such as Schenker’s and typically illustrated with the instrumental music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Classical tonality and common-​tone tonality coexist in nineteenth-​century music, often within the same piece.10 In this chapter I seek to establish the following: (1) Bellini was fond of pairing chords and keys separated by thirds, emphasizing common-​tone relations, in ways that cannot readily be explained in terms of classical tonality; (2) Bellini uses fixed pitches, especially in the vocal line, to unify stretches of music that do not cohere in classical ways; and (3) long-​range voice-​leading analysis, in the Schenkerian manner but not assuming tonal unity, is a rewarding method for the examination of Bellini’s music.

Textual Issues A list of Bellini’s operas, along with dates of their first performance and publication, is provided in table 9.1. To date four operas—​I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La sonnambula, I puritani, and La straniera—​have appeared in the critical edition. All of Bellini’s operas except his first were published in piano-​vocal score, mostly by Ricordi of Milan, soon after their premieres, whereas most of Rossini’s operas were first published abroad, usually without the composer’s participation or consent.11 Analyses of “Casta diva” include Pierluigi Petrobelli, “Casta diva,” in Il verso cantato, ed. Adelaide Pescatore et al. (Rome, 1994), 23–​32; Giorgio Sanguinetti, “Casta diva, o la soavità delle dissonanze,” in “ . . . et facciam dolci canti . . . ,” ed. Bianca Maria Antolini et al. (Lucca, 2003), 1133–​48; and Nicholas Baragwanath, The Italian Traditions and Puccini, 126–​31. 8 Budden review, 246. 9 Kopp, Chromatic Transformations in Nineteenth-​Century Music, 1–​17. 10 The distinction between classical and common-​ tone tonality may recall Gregory Proctor’s distinction between “eighteenth-​century diatonic tonality” and “nineteenth-​century chromatic tonality,” but the two are far from equivalent: common-​tone tonality may be largely or even exclusively diatonic. Proctor, “Technical Bases of Nineteenth-​Century Chromatic Tonality: A Study in Chromaticism” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1978). More pertinent is the idea of “double syntax” in Richard Cohn, Audacious Euphony, 195–​210. 11 Gossett, “The Operas of Rossini,” 127–​40. 7

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  293 Table 9.1.  Bellini’s operas Title

First performance

First edition (piano-​vocal score)

Adelson e Salvini

Naples, 1825

Milan: Ricordi, 1903

Bianca e Fernando, first version

Naples, 1826

Naples: Girard, 1826

Il pirata

Milan, 1827

Milan: Ricordi, 1828

Bianca e Fernando, second version

Genoa, 1828

Milan: Ricordi, 1837

La straniera

Milan, 1829

Milan: Ricordi, 1829

Zaira

Parma, 1829

unpublished

I Capuleti e i Montecchi

Venice, 1830

Milan: Ricordi, 1831

La sonnambula

Milan, 1831

Milan: Ricordi, 1831

Norma

Milan, 1831

Milan: Ricordi, 1832

Beatrice di Tenda

Venice, 1833

Milan: Ricordi, 1833

I puritani

Paris, 1835

Milan: Ricordi, 1836

Special importance attaches to the first editions of Bellini’s operas. Earlier assumptions that autograph manuscripts offer the definitive musical texts have been strongly questioned.12 To value first editions over autographs may seem odd, but Bellini’s autographs were used as performance materials, not always in productions in which the composer was personally involved. They sometimes contain multiple layers of corrections and alterations, not all of them by Bellini himself.13 Nor, as described in the Introduction to this book, were changes made by the composer necessarily intended to be permanent. Some were made to suit a particular singer in a particular production; others, no doubt, were intended as definitive. Separating definitive from non-​definitive revisions involves a certain amount of guesswork and may be impossible in some cases. It was rare to publish operas in full score; the first Bellini opera to be so published was Beatrice di Tenda, which appeared in full score in 1840. To publish a complete opera meant, almost always, to publish it in vocal score, with the orchestral part reduced for the piano (not by the composer). Bellini’s correspondence suggests that he sent autograph copies of individual numbers to 12 This assumption mars Raffaello Monterosso’s “Per un’edizione di Norma,” in Scritti in onore di Luigi Ronga (Milan: Ricciardi, 1973), 415–​510. A more informed perspective may be found in Charles S. Brauner, “Textual Problems in Bellini’s ‘Norma’ and ‘Beatrice di Tenda,’” Journal of the American Musicological Society 29 (1976): 99–​118, on which much of the information in this section is based. 13 See Philip Gossett’s introduction to the facsimile edition of Norma (New York: Garland, 1983). As was customary, Bellini’s contracts obligated him to supervise the first three performances of a new opera.

294  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Ricordi as he composed. The complete vocal score of an opera could thus be ready for sale soon after the premiere, when interest in the new work would be at its height.14 Bellini’s surviving autographs differ from the first editions, sometimes markedly so.15 The keys of recitatives and pezzi chiusi are sometimes higher in the autographs; this is especially, but not exclusively, true when Bellini was writing for the tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini, whose high register was legendary. The chronology of revision is often uncertain, but it is now thought that the surviving autographs sometimes reflect a later stage than the first editions. This leaves a question: Who was responsible for the lower pitch levels in the first editions? Or, to put it differently, where keys differ between autograph and first edition, which should be regarded as the original and which the transposition? Philip Gossett believes that the first editions contain transpositions, that Ricordi (not Bellini) was responsible for them, and that the higher keys in the autographs should be used wherever qualified singers are available.16 He thus disagrees with Lippmann, who has written, “That the version in Ricordi’s first edition should not have accorded with Bellini’s wishes is really out of the question.”17 Lippmann fails to offer substantial evidence for his position, but he has in his favor Bellini’s silence on the question of transposition in his published scores. When first editions of his operas appeared, Bellini was quick to complain of errors, but he seems never to have complained about transpositions. Either he didn’t care, or the first editions reflect his wishes. I am inclined to the latter view in most cases.18 Although the first editions might not reflect Bellini’s final intentions, they probably reflect his intentions at a certain time, a time shortly before the premiere of each opera. It is obvious, though, that Bellini was a practical man of the theater, and that he sanctioned multiple solutions to the question of transposition for particular performances. My views on this matter were formed by my work on Il pirata. The 1828 first edition, on which later editions are based, shows a remarkable coherence in the first half of act 1, clustering around the keys B♭/​g/​G—​a minor key plus its relative and parallel majors. This is the trio-​of-​keys technique discussed in ­chapter 8 in connection with Guillaume Tell. (Rossini first heard Il pirata a few months after the premiere of Tell.) Bellini’s autograph, which is heavily revised, shows no such coherence in act 1. In the first edition, but not the autograph, the second half of the act temporarily shifts its emphasis to C major and F major, but the finale works its 14 See Brauner’s discussion of the sources for Norma and Beatrice di Tenda. Bellini’s dealings with Ricordi seem to have been fairly consistent from Il pirata onward. 15 The following Bellini autographs have been published in facsimile as part of the Garland Press series Early Romantic Opera: Il pirata, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Norma, and I puritani. A copyist’s manuscript of La straniera, with annotations and alterations in Bellini’s hand, appears in the same series, as does the 1840 full score of Beatrice di Tenda. 16 Gossett, Divas and Scholars, 344–​48 and 353–​58. 17 Quoted in Herbert Weinstock, Vincenzo Bellini: His Life and His Operas (New York: Knopf, 1971), 431. 18 For “Casta diva,” Gossett makes a strong case for following the autograph rather than the first edition; Divas and Scholars, 345–​48.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  295

way back to B♭ major by way of B♭ minor. The tonal coherence of act 1 is exceptional for Bellini, but Il pirata is an opera to which he devoted an unusual amount of work, and act 1 is exceptionally fine. I find it difficult to believe that the first edition of Bellini’s first opera for La Scala, the opera in which he sought and made his international reputation, exhibits such striking relationships merely by chance.19 Additional research is needed in this area, however, because the first edition of Il pirata is in some respects a rather disorderly document.20 For reasons discussed in the Introduction, the concept of a stable text remains controversial for this repertoire. In principle, I regard Bellini’s first editions as my texts of choice. Three have been published in facsimile by MKT Edizioni Musicali: Bianca e Fernando, Il pirata, and Norma. The critical edition of La straniera appeared in 2020, too late for me to consult it in detail; I have used the Ricordi vocal score and the published facsimile of a copyist’s full score, in which Bellini notated changes that he made to accommodate Rubini’s high tessitura. To the extent that I treat I Capuleti and La sonnambula, I have used the critical edition. For Beatrice di Tenda I follow the 1840 full score. Throughout this chapter, I give priority to Bellini’s autographs in determining the divisions of an opera into numbers and, to a lesser extent, the titles of those numbers. Publishers had a strong incentive to divide operas into as many pieces as possible, since each piece could be sold separately. For example, act 1 of Il pirata contains seven numbers in the autograph (the overture is not numbered), but twelve numbers (including the overture) in the first edition.21

Recitative and Scena The musical and formal functions of recitative were in flux during Bellini’s career. It is difficult to address the issue in general terms. Each example must be judged individually. In the eighteenth century, when most recitatives were accompanied by keyboard, only those recitatives accompanied by the orchestra were considered part of a number; secco recitatives separated numbers from each other. As we know from earlier chapters, many of Rossini’s recitatives carry titles such as Dopo l’Aria (“after the aria”) or Dopo il Duetto, indicating an internumerical function similar to that of the old recitativo secco. Only in especially imposing numbers is a scena included in Rossini’s scores as part of the number, and even then its function is introductory. Tellingly, the scena rarely participates in Rossini’s unified harmonic

19 Because La Scala was located in Austrian-​ruled Milan, an opera that succeeded there was likely to be performed in Vienna, as Il pirata was in 1828. See Gossett, 22. 20 This is especially true of the plate numbers. In act 1, for example, there are eleven plate numbers in the following order: 3364 (overture), 3470, 3471, 3472, 3474, 3484, 3473, 3485, 3486, 3487, 3475. 21 The autograph’s no. 2, Cavatina Gualtiero, is given a double number, “No. 3.4,” in the first edition, with no indication of where no. 3 ends and no. 4 begins.

296  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera plans, in which almost every number begins and ends in the same key, or at least with the same tonic. Bellini’s practice is less predictable: he includes some recitatives but not others within his numbers. Degrees of inclusion or exclusion can be subtle. In I Capuleti, act 2 begins with Scena ed Aria di Giulietta (orchestral prelude–​scena–​primo tempo–​tempo di mezzo–​cabaletta); this is followed in the score by Recitativo dopo l’Aria di Giulietta. The following number is a duet for Romeo and Tebaldo (Tybalt), and it is preceded by a passage labeled Scena del Duetto (“scena of the duet”), which again is introduced by an orchestral prelude. Above the primo tempo appears the title Duetto di Romeo e Tebaldo, indicating that the duet proper begins at this point, not earlier. The finale of act 1 is more complicated. It opens with the usual chorus, followed by a passage labeled Recitativo dopo il Coro del Finale Primo. The concertato (slow movement) follows, then the tempo di mezzo and stretta, which together are labeled Seguito del Finale del Primo Atto (“Continuation of the Finale of Act 1”). Among several ambiguities, one is this: Is the Recitativo dopo il Coro del Finale Primo part of the finale proper, or does it act as an internal parenthesis? In this case the former conclusion seems correct, because the recitative modulates from E♭ major to A♭ major; the following movements lead from A♭ back to E♭. The G-​major opening chorus stands apart from this scheme. Bellini has been credited with blurring the distinction between recitative and aria textures, although this was not without precedent.22 While Italian librettists faithfully preserved the traditional distinction between versi sciolti for recitatives and versi lirici for lyric movements, Bellini often introduces aria-​like passages within his recitatives, stimulated not by the poetic form but by the dramatic situation. A celebrated example is the arioso “Teneri figli” at the beginning of act 2 of Norma. Bellini quotes the melody of the arioso in the scene’s orchestral prelude. Orchestral pre-​echoes are normal for the main theme of a pezzo chiuso; in a scena they are extraordinary.

Characteristic Foreground Techniques The following examples illustrate characteristic Bellini-​isms that are rarely found in German music of the same decade (1825–​1835).

Unaccompanied Cadences This is a stylistic fingerprint of Bellini, part of his way of placing the vocal line in the spotlight. It occurs mostly, if not exclusively, in recitatives. The orchestra

22 See Lippmann, Vincenzo Bellini und die italienische Opera seria seiner Zeit, 53–​91.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  297 states the penultimate harmony in a cadential progression, but only the vocal line completes the cadence; the orchestra falls silent. When the orchestra re-​ enters, it either confirms the implied cadential harmony or contradicts it. When the implied harmony is contradicted, the substitute harmony includes the vocal line’s concluding pitch-​class. The resulting progression might in some cases be perceived as a deceptive cadence. Unlike the classical deceptive cadence, however, there is usually no repetition of the cadential progression, no attempt to “correct” it. The unaccompanied cadence stands for a regular cadence, either authentic or half, rather than delaying the cadence as in most eighteenth-​ century music. There is a clear resemblance to the deceptive cadences in Wagner’s music dramas, where the singer cadences but the orchestra does not, and no “better” cadence follows. This is probably one of the areas in which Bellini influenced Wagner. Example 9.1 occurs near the beginning of the tomb scene in I Capuleti, the opera’s finale ultimo. Romeo is grieving over Giulietta (Juliet). In the first two measures, the music seems to be moving toward either a PAC or a half cadence in A♭ major. Instead, ii6 of A♭ is reinterpreted as iv6 of F minor; the vocal line completes the motion to f:V, suggesting a half cadence. The cadence is, in fact, ambiguous: Romeo’s old-​fashioned falling-​fourth ending, F–​C, hints at an about-​ to-​be-​completed PAC in F minor, in which V7–​i would be sounded by the orchestra

Example 9.1.  I Capuleti e i Montecchi, act 2, Finale, mm. 84–​89

298  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 9.2.  Norma, act 1, Duetto Adalgisa–​Pollione: End of the scena

once the voice has finished. Instead, the orchestra takes Romeo’s C and turns it into the leading tone of D♭ major.23 Example 9.2 is from the Adalgisa–​Pollione duet in Norma, which receives more detailed treatment later in this chapter. The example shows the end of the scena and the orchestral introduction to the tempo d’attacco. Adalgisa resolves the “Italian” augmented-​sixth chord of A minor to V of the same key, in the process resolving Pollione’s D♯ to E. The orchestra is silent. When the orchestra re-​enters, it is with a vigorously repeated C major triad, which a listener rightly guesses will act as V of F—​F minor, as it turns out. The common-​tone link between the two dominants is Adalgisa’s E. It is difficult to hear the augmented-​sixth chord resolving to C major, the next literal chord; the intervening presence of A minor’s dominant is too palpable, so much so that one could speak of an implied cross-​relation between G♯, the third of a:V, and the G♮–​F♮–​E with which Adalgisa embellishes her concluding note. With characteristically Bellinian understatement, her minor third G♮–​E is absorbed into the ensuing C major harmony—​a brilliant use of 23 In a nineteenth-​century German vocal score available on IMSLP (Braunschweig: Litolff), Romeo’s vocal line (p. 141) ends not F–​F–​F–​C but G–​A♭–​A♭–​E♭, completing a motion to A♭:V. The effect is comparable to, but more conventional than, that found in the critical edition.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  299 Example 9.3.  Norma, act 2, Finale: “Son io”

common-​tone relations that helps propel the musico-​dramatic tension into the tempo d’attacco. Example 9.3 is taken from another number that will be examined more fully later. The most celebrated of Bellini’s unaccompanied cadences, Norma’s cry “Son io” (“It is I”) is the turning point of that opera’s finale ultimo. Bellini composes Norma’s line as an unaccompanied PAC in C major, followed by a long silence and, in the autograph, a double bar line.24 The orchestra then enters with the chord of A minor, pianissimo. Is this a deceptive cadence? The silence suggests that it is not. The autograph provides further evidence: the chords that accompany Norma, 24 The passage appears on folio 86v of the facsimile.

300  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera scored for woodwinds and horns, at one point included a cadential tonic. Bellini crossed out the tonic chord in the autograph and halved the length of the preceding V7, changing it from a half note to a quarter note followed by a quarter rest. The cadence is not a deceptive cadence but a modified PAC; the final tonic chord is implied but deliberately withheld.25

Mixture of Relative Keys Lippmann discusses Bellini’s predilection for moving from minor to major, but he makes no distinction between parallel and relative majors.26 In classical tonality the distinction is crucial. To mix parallel keys preserves the identity and hierarchical priority of the tonic note. From the perspective of classical tonality, such a change represents a new expressive color, but it leaves the fundamental bass—​Schenker’s Stufen—​mostly unaffected. Like Schoenberg with his “chromatic modes,” theorists in the Schenkerian tradition do not regard a change to the parallel mode as a change of key. Schenker even claimed that every key is simultaneously major and minor, in eighteenth-​as well as nineteenth-​century music.27 By contrast, a change to the relative major, from a monotonal perspective, is a shift either from i to IIIT or from viT to I. One key is regarded as central, the other as dependent. Mixture of parallel major and minor is common in the eighteenth century, not only in the late-​century Viennese style but in Italian music from earlier in the century.28 It becomes more common still after 1800 in the music of Beethoven and, above all, Schubert. As is well known, Schubert occasionally used directional tonality in his songs, beginning in one key and ending in another to express an unusual progression of feeling in the text; Ganymed (D. 544, 1817) is perhaps the most famous example. Bellini makes such progressions almost routine, less often within individual pezzi chiusi, where they occur occasionally, than over the course of a whole number. More disorienting for listeners is mixture of relative keys at a local level, especially if the passage fails to follow classical norms of harmonic progression. Such a passage opens the overture to Bellini’s second opera, Bianca e Fernando (example 9.4). This passage remained unchanged when the opera was revised in 1828. After a clear D-​minor opening (which will supply the head-​motive of the Andante), the Allegro risoluto tonicizes first G minor, then B♭ major, beneath a top voice that ascends by step from F (m. 1) to D (m. 3).29 Presumably, G minor is to be heard as d:iv. But what of B♭ major? Is it heard primarily as d:VI, g:III, or B♭:I? Silence follows. The Lento returns to D minor, where V7 resolves 25 Monterosso (“Per un’edizione di Norma,” 506) discusses a (mostly illegible) change to Norma’s vocal line, but he fails to mention Bellini’s changes to the accompaniment. 26 Lippmann, “Lo stile belliniano in ‘Norma,’” in Opera e Libretto I, ed. Gianfranco Folena et al. (Florence: Olschki, 1990), 211–​24. 27 Schenker, Harmony, 86–​87. 28 Daniel Heartz, Music in European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720–​80 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 84 and 106–​7. 29 If one assumes an implied bass note of D in m. 1, the same sixth is outlined by the bass a little more quickly and in the opposite direction.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  301 Example 9.4.  Bianca e Fernando, Sinfonia, mm. 1–​16

inconclusively to a D-​minor 64 chord. This is followed by the same progression a third higher, as though the music is beginning to make the standard move to the relative major. Meanwhile the top voice has continued to climb by step, allowing for changes of register, so that mm. 1–​5 outline the tenth F4–​A5, an interval that belongs to both D minor and F major triads. The long stepwise ascent seems to be the principal unifying feature of the passage. Harmonically, any sense of arrival is undercut by the 64 chords in mm. 4–​5, and by the fact that m. 5 is a sequential repetition of m. 4. The next thing we hear is a diminished 63 chord on G (m. 6), which could function equally well as d:iio6 or F:viio6. Example 9.5 shows hypothetical continuations in each key. Instead the music moves to a fortissimo A, representing d:V. This does not settle matters, because in this repertoire V of a minor key, when followed by silence, is almost as likely to move to I of its relative major as it is to i of its own key.30 Only the appearance of the Andante theme in D minor establishes that key beyond doubt. From here to the end the overture clings obstinately to its tonic, all centrifugal impulses spent. The locus of uncertainty is mm. 3–​6, where each measure is isolated by silence, making the meter as uncertain as the tonality. Taken by itself, the bass line F–​B♭–​ A–​C–​G–​A suggests the key of F major. The fundamental bass of mm. 3–​5, shown in example 9.6, reveals a sequence, one that accompanies the ascending hexachord 30 See c­ hapter 6.

302  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 9.5.  Hypothetical continuations after m. 5

Example 9.6.  Measures 3–​5 with fundamental bass

C–​D–​E–​F–​G–​A without revealing exclusive allegiance to any one key.31 Bellini’s idiosyncratic use of 64 chords withholds stability from both D minor and F major, the two leading candidates for tonic status.

Avoiding the Leading Tone in Minor Although relative keys are often said to share the same scale, the leading tone of the minor key distinguishes them. Remarkably, Bellini often avoids the leading tone of the minor mode in his vocal lines while emphasizing the natural seventh degree; the leading tone appears only, or at least primarily, in the orchestra. The vocal line is thus rendered diatonic in the strictest sense, while motion between relative keys—​what twentieth-​century Russian theorists termed mutability—​is eased.32 31 A similar sequence begins Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, but there the initial ambiguity concerns fifth-​related keys, F minor and C minor. The opening measures also lack Bellini’s flat-​side tonicizations. 32 Mutability (peremennost’) is the standard term in Russian scholarship for relative-​key aporia, following the work of B. L. Yavorsky (1877–​1942) and Viktor Berkov (1907–​1975). I am indebted to Daniil Zavlunov and Ellen Bakulina for information on Russian music theory.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  303 Example 9.7.  Bianca e Fernando, act 2, Aria Fernando: An excerpt from the cabaletta

Example 9.7 shows a passage from the cabaletta of Fernando’s act 2 aria in Bianca e Fernando. The cabaletta is in B♭ major, but G minor is tonicized in the middle. Throughout, the vocal line continues to feature F♮ while avoiding F♯; the latter note is used only as a chromatic passing tone within the final B♭-​major cadence (not shown). Similarly, in the G-minor/​B♭-​major primo tempo of Gualtiero’s cavatina in Il pirata, the tenor never sings F♯ so long as the key is G minor. (G♭ appears after the key has shifted to B♭.33) Alaide’s romanza from La straniera, yet another piece that vacillates between G minor and B♭ major, similarly avoids F♯ 33 The aria is discussed in Rothstein, “Common-​Tone Tonality in Italian Romantic Opera.”

304  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

in the vocal line except as a chromatic passing tone in a B♭-​major context. Interestingly, the three pieces described in this paragraph were all composed between 1827 and 1829; Fernando’s aria dates from the 1828 revision of Bianca. The relative-​key mutability exhibited by these arias probably stems from the French romance and the Italian romanza, especially as represented by Desdemona’s “Willow Song” in Rossini’s Otello. It, too, oscillates between G minor and B♭ major.34

Supplenti Basevi’s concepts of attinenti and supplenti were introduced in ­ chapter 2. A supplente is a melodic dissonance that is followed by a leap, almost always downward. Many of Basevi’s supplenti involve the interval of a ninth above the bass, where the ninth is not explicitly resolved to the octave. Basevi offers examples by Mozart, Spontini, and other older composers. According to Basevi, supplenti came to be used more often by Rossini and his contemporaries; Bellini and Donizetti merely continued the tradition. In fact, Bellini uses supplenti more often than Rossini. Example 9.8, from a tenor aria in La sonnambula, contains a striking supplente on the downbeat of its third measure. F4, a seventh above the bass G, is prepared like a suspension, but it sounds against a cadential 64 that includes the expected note of resolution, E4 (the key is C major). Sounding a suspension against its resolution is discouraged in traditional part-​writing. F could be understood as the seventh of the next chord, V, but by that point F4 has been abandoned in the melody. E4 is reached from below on the following downbeat, as part of a diminished-​s eventh chord that begins a repetition of the cadence.

Local Techniques with Large-​Scale Consequences The following analyses treat brief passages, but the techniques involved are often used by Bellini to create associations over longer musical spans.

The Sonorità The fixed vocal pitch, or sonorità (“sonority”), was first described in analyses of middle-​period Verdi by Pierluigi Petrobelli, who coined the term, and Martin

34 Desdemona sings F♯ in the Willow Song over a G-​minor half cadence, but her F♯ descends to F♮ as the key changes to B♭ major. Exceptionally, Rossini slurs G–​F♯–​F♮, asking that the three notes be sung in one breath, despite the obvious phrase boundary between F♯ and F♮.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  305 Example 9.8.  La sonnambula, act 2, Aria Elvino, mm. 40–​43

Chusid.35 Chusid pointed to the use of C4 as a focal melodic pitch in Rigoletto, Petrobelli to the recurrence of B4 in music sung by Azucena in Il trovatore.36 Harold Powers expanded the concept by noting the tendency of a sonorità to have a prominent upper neighbor a semitone away; he describes the latter pitch as a secondary sonorità.37 (Conveniently, the word sonorità is both singular and plural.) Thus, for example, Rigoletto’s C4 tends to be embellished by or move to D♭4. In the love duet from Verdi’s Otello, Desdemona’s primary sonorità of E5 is paired with its upper neighbor F5, ultimately moving to that note at the end.38 I have expanded the concept still further to include an unordered cell of three diatonically adjacent pitches, D4–​E♭4–​F4, which recurs many times in Gualtiero’s cavatina from Il pirata.39 The point is that a sonorità, whether single or multiple, does not depend on key or harmonization for its definition; only its pitch(es) matter.

35 Petrobelli, “Per un’esegesi della struttura drammatica del Trovatore,” in Atti del IIIo Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani (Parma, 1974), 387–​400; trans. William Drabkin as “Towards an Explanation of the Dramatic Structure of Il trovatore,” Music Analysis 1 (1982): 129–​41. Chusid, “Rigoletto and Monterone: A Study in Musical Dramaturgy,” in IMS Report 1972, ed. Henrik Glahn et al., 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Hansen, 1974), 1: 325–​36; rept. in Verdi: Bollettino 3 (1982): 1544–​58. 36 See c­ hapter 1. 37 Powers, “Il ‘Do del baritono’ nel ‘gioco delle parti’ verdiano,” in Opera e Libretto II (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 267–​81. 38 Powers, “Un altro bacio: Multivalent Analysis and Verdian Musical Dramaturgy,” unpublished. 39 Rothstein, “Common-​Tone Tonality.”

306  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Some of Bellini’s German contemporaries also used the sonorità as an organizing concept. Peter Kaminsky has written on Schumann’s piano music of the late 1830s, especially Davidsbündlertänze (1837), in which the pitch B4 links the keys of G major, B minor, and B major.40 Suzannah Clark notes the presence of fixed melodic pitches in Schubert’s late instrumental music, especially the first movements of the String Quartet in G Major (1826, publ. 1851) and the String Quintet in C Major (1828, publ. 1853). In both works, the pitch G4 dominates the second theme in the exposition, although that theme is in D major in the quartet and in E♭ major (more or less) in the quintet.41 Schubert’s love of Italian opera is no secret, but Schumann may have said more than he intended when he wrote, in 1836, that he had “sucked dry” the best of the “honey” from Bellini’s operas.42 Because Bellini often pairs relative keys, and because a sonorità remains fixed as keys change, the large number of common tones between relative keys translates into a relatively wide choice of pitches that might serve as a sonorità. There is a tendency, however, for a single-​note sonorità to belong to the tonic triads of both keys. For Bellini, whose love of the third scale degree in major was pointed out by Berlioz, this often means that 3̂ in major serves also as 5̂ in the relative minor.43 Azucena’s B4 thus serves the pairing of G major with E minor. Another example is the primo tempo of Elvino’s act 2 aria in La sonnambula, of which we saw a small portion in example 9.8. This movement pairs A minor and C major, starting in the former key and ending in the latter.44 Example 9.9 shows the opening eight-​measure period. Elvino’s sonorità is E4, and this pitch recurs obsessively throughout the movement. Sometimes E4 is used as an appoggiatura or suspension, as in the second half of the penultimate measure. More remarkable is the passage shown in example 9.10, where the melody, considered by itself, seems to prolong E4, even though this pitch is dissonant with the harmony of the accompaniment; Basevi would have called it a supplente. Analyzed without reference to the accompaniment, the melody seems at first—​judging from the repeated downward leaps from E to A—​to treat E as the fifth of A minor. The melody then surrounds E4 with its diatonic neighbors, D4 and F4. The subsequent leap from E4 to C4, across the bar line, seems to confirm the harmonic status of both pitches. The harmonic status of E4 is further confirmed by the C-​major arpeggio in the second measure.

40 Peter Kaminsky, “Principles of Formal Structure in Schumann’s Early Piano Cycles,” Music Theory Spectrum 11 (1989): 207–​25. 41 Suzannah Clark, Analyzing Schubert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 177–​86. 42 “Viele (z. B. wir und ich) denken selten an Bellini und dann ist so ein Aufrütteln gut. An der Stelle der Original-​ Verleger litte ich aber so ein Honigaussaugen aus Bellini’s Opern durchaus nicht: wahrhaftig, das Beste wird herausgezogen.” Schumann, review of Johann Ruckgaber’s Souvenir de Bellini (1836), in Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1875), 1:233–​34. 43 Berlioz, Les musiciens et la musique (Paris, n.d.), 173; quoted in Lippmann, “Su ‘La straniera’ di Bellini,” Nuova rivista musicale italiana 5 (1971): 565–​605; 589. 44 The original keys are B minor and D major, but this fact does not affect the relations described here.

Example 9.9.  The same, mm. 10–​18

Example 9.10.  The same, mm. 36–​37

308  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera If the accompaniment is taken into account, one might analyze Elvino’s melody differently. But the harmonic implications of a melody qua melody are an independent variable in music, as theorists from Fétis to Hindemith have acknowledged.45 The relation of melodically projected harmonies to the harmonies of the accompaniment may range from complete agreement to complete disagreement. The timbral distinctiveness of a vocal melody makes it especially salient as a separable layer of a musical texture. It is this distinctiveness that makes the sonorità possible. For Powers’s sonorità-​pair there are two diatonic semitones available, 3̂–4̂ and ̂7–8̂ of the major scale. Of these, 3̂–4̂ possesses the clear advantage of becoming 5̂–6̂ in the relative minor—​a tonic-​triad note as primary sonorità, a less stable note as secondary sonorità. Not surprisingly, Bellini makes ample use of this diatonic semitone in numbers that vacillate between relative keys: for example, D5–​E♭5 in Alaide’s romanza from La straniera, and the same pitch-​pair in Giulietta’s romanza from I Capuleti. Both pieces use the tonal pairing G minor/​B♭ major.46

Bait-​and-​Switch Dominants Bellini sometimes prepares a forthcoming tonic with the dominant of a different key. The two keys are usually relatives, so the technique is related to the mixture of relative keys described above. The bait-​and-​switch technique tends to appear in one of three places: (1) at the conclusion of a scena, just before the primo tempo; (2) at the conclusion of a tempo di mezzo, just before the cabaletta; or (3) at the end of the ritornello that separates the two statements of a cabaletta. A characteristic pattern is to follow a half cadence on V of a minor key with I of the relative major at the beginning of the next phrase, section, or movement. Example 9.11, from Romeo’s cavatina in I Capuleti, illustrates. Here the tempo di mezzo ends with emphatic dominant preparation for E minor; e:V is intensified by a preceding augmented-​sixth chord (m. 109). Romeo, a mezzo-​soprano, ends on an unaccompanied B3. The orchestra then begins the cabaletta in G major, the same key as the aria’s primo tempo. Example 9.12 shows the end of the ritornello that separates the two statements of Romeo’s cabaletta; as often happens, the ritornello recapitulates material from the tempo di mezzo. The same unaccompanied half cadence in E minor is heard, but this time it is followed by a forceful V7 of G major before the cabaletta recommences. By implication, D♯, the unsounded third of e:V, descends to D♮, the

45 See the discussion of Fétis, Basevi, and Sechter in ­chapter 2, and of Schenker in ­chapter 3. For Hindemith, see The Craft of Musical Composition, vol. 1, trans. Arthur Mendel (New York, 1945), 175–​201. 46 G minor/​B♭ major is Bellini’s favorite tonal pairing, although in early operas he shows almost equal predilection for F minor/​A♭ major. Beatrice di Tenda features g/​B♭ pairings through most of the opera but shifts to f/​A♭ for the two final numbers. Giulietta’s romanza in I Capuleti was originally composed for Adelson e Salvini, where it appears a whole step lower, in f/​A♭.

Example 9.11.  I Capuleti e i Montecchi, act 1, Cavatina Romeo, mm. 108–​18

310  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 9.12.  The same, mm. 152–​57

root of G:V. While example 9.11 is Rossinian in inspiration, example 9.12 is more characteristic of Bellini.47 Bellini rings various changes on the pattern of example 9.12. At the end of the tempo d’attacco of the Adalgisa–​Pollione duet (example 9.13a), we hear another minor-​key half cadence, complete with augmented-​sixth chord. Here the shift to V of the relative major is unaccompanied. Most intriguing is the penultimate measure, where Pollione’s D♭ initially sounds like a minor ninth above f:V, the last chord heard. In retrospect, this D♭ will probably be understood to represent a pre-​dominant harmony in A♭, something along the lines of example 9.13b. The cabaletta, in A♭ major, follows. As in example 9.12, the cabaletta’s central ritornello refers to the end of the tempo di mezzo while making the harmonic shift more violent (example 9.13c). Example 9.14, from Beatrice di Tenda, shows the end of the scena and the beginning of the tempo d’attacco in the Agnese–​Orombello duet. The scena ends with a half cadence in A minor, represented by the orchestra’s unison E in the first measure of the Allegro moderato. The harmony then changes to a C major 63 chord, E remaining in the bass. The diminished-​seventh chord in the second measure of the Allegro moderato could belong to either C major or A minor, although the chord’s spelling and the subsequent G♮ in the vocal line indicate C major. Despite the apparent C-​major allegiance of mm. 2–​5 (counting from the beginning of the Allegro 47 A similar shift from a unison B, representing e:V, to G:V7 occurs at the parallel spot in Filippo’s cavatina in Bianca e Fernando. In both passages the E-​minor half cadence is strengthened by an augmented-​sixth chord. See also the end of the tempo di mezzo in Gualtiero’s cavatina in Il pirata.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  311 Example 9.13.  Norma, act 1, Duetto Adalgisa–​Pollione

a. End of the tempo di mezzo b. The same, with a hypothetical harmonization c. End of the ritornello in the cabaletta

moderato), the A-​minor half cadence is renewed in mm. 6–​9; the only root-​position C major chord in the passage is assimilated to A minor as its III. A reduction of the bass line would show C–​D–​D♯–​E for mm. 6–​7, E alone being sounded in a low register. A reduction of mm. 1–​9 (example 9.14b) shows E as the principal bass note for the entire passage. Only in mm. 10–​11 does the modulation to C major become definitive, with emphatic cadential motion in both bass and harmony. More adventurous is a passage from the aria finale of Bianca e Fernando in the 1828 revision (example 9.15). The primo tempo and cabaletta are in G major. The

Example 9.14.  Beatrice di Tenda, act 1, Duetto Agnese–​Orombello

Example 9.14.  Continued

a. End of the scena and beginning of the tempo d’attacco b. The first nine measures of the Allegro moderato in analytical reduction Example 9.15.  Bianca e Fernando, Aria finale: An excerpt from the tempo di mezzo

314  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 9.16.  Norma, act 1, Finale: Beginning of the trio

tempo di mezzo, part of which is shown here, circumscribes e:V with upper and lower neighbors, C♮ and A♯, in the bass. Instead of returning to e:V and then moving to V of the relative major, as in examples seen thus far, the return to e:V is elided; e:V65/​V moves directly to G:V. The progression sounds logical owing to the melodic sequence in ascending minor thirds: C♯–​B–​A♯, E–​D♯–​C♯, G–​F♯–​E (see the brackets in the example). An unusual example of dueling dominants, different in nature from those shown thus far, appears in example 9.16, from the act 1 finale in Norma. This finale consists of a short duet (scena–​adagio–​cabaletta) followed by a full-​scale trio (tempo d’attacco–​adagio–​tempo di mezzo–​stretta); the example shows the orchestral prelude to the tempo d’attacco.48 Norma and Adalgisa have just sung a rapturous C-​major cabaletta, but trouble is brewing: Norma is about to learn that Adalgisa’s beloved is none other than Pollione, father to Norma’s children. The worm of doubt is nicely expressed by the apparent V7 of A♭ in m. 3. This is used as a neighboring chord to C:V7, which appears in two different inversions just before and after, with the common tone G5 emphasized in the first violins. The same passage will be repeated twice more, once in A major and once modulating from A minor back to C major. The first of these repetitions is led into, unusually, from an unresolved g:V65 (example 9.17, third measure), again with the common tone—​ now A4—​repeated in the first violins’ sixteenth notes. Bellini avoids any authentic cadence and any strong V–​I resolution throughout an introductory passage of thirty-​nine measures, building tension until Norma explodes into a cabaletta-​like melody of rage, once again in C major. The remainder of this chapter examines a scena from Norma and two complete numbers, one each from Norma and La straniera. These analyses do not pretend to be complete; they focus almost exclusively on pitch structure. Dramatic events are mentioned only when they are immediately relevant to the musical analysis. There is also little in the way of formal analysis. I am emphasizing those aspects of Bellini’s music that are most conspicuously missing from earlier accounts.

48 David Kimbell refers to this tempo d’attacco as a scena, although the text is both metered and rhymed. Kimbell, Vincenzo Bellini: Norma, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 34.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  315 Example 9.17.  A later passage in the tempo d’attacco

Long-​Range Linearity: The Scena of the Adalgisa–​Pollione Duet This duet cost Bellini more effort than any other number in Norma; he continued to express dissatisfaction with it even after the premiere.49 Why this is so is unclear, because the duet is among the high points of the opera, and the scena is one of Bellini’s best. For orientation, I refer both to measure numbers and to page numbers in the Kalmus vocal score.50 This score reprints an edition by Arthur 49 Monterosso, “Per un’edizione di Norma,” 438–​60; Kimbell, Norma, 78–​82. 50 Measures in the vocal score are given as page/​system/​measure. For example, 25/​2/​4 indicates the fourth measure on the second system of p. 25.

316  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Sullivan and Josiah Pittman, originally published by Boosey & Hawkes in the late nineteenth century. The scena may be found on pp. 52–​56; the tempo d’attacco begins on p. 57. Owing to the frequent interchange between male and female voices, I represent all of Pollione’s pitches one octave higher than they sound. When male and female voices sing similar material in alternation, listeners spontaneously equate corresponding vocal registers in this way. The high register of a tenor corresponds to that of a soprano or mezzo-​soprano; their low registers correspond similarly. The two-​movement duet, tempo d’attacco plus cabaletta, moves from F minor to A♭ major, but its scena begins in B♭ major. There is an orchestral prelude of twenty-​six measures, consisting of little more than an expanded B♭-​major cadence. Example 9.18, which omits the prelude, is a figured-​bass reduction of the scena. Measure numbers are given above the treble staff. The letters A (Adalgisa) and P (Pollione) indicate who is singing. Top-​voice pitches shown for mm. 27–​55 highlight the underlying continuity of Adalgisa’s vocal line, a continuity that exceeds that of traditional recitative. The parentheses at m. 55 (vocal score, 54/​3/​3) denote implied resolutions in both vocal line and orchestra. After a silence, the melodic note of resolution, A♭4, appears in the first violins (m. 57 =​54/​4/​2), while the orchestral bass sounds D♭ instead of the expected F. Adalgisa’s arioso, “Deh! proteggimi, o Dio!,” follows. Up to this point, Adalgisa has been thinking of her transgressive love for Pollione; now she addresses her god directly, asking to be delivered from that love. Enclosed in brackets in the example, the arioso is a short but complete tonal structure in D♭ ​major with a fundamental line of 3̂–2̂–1̂, F4–​E♭4–​D♭4. Twice, Adalgisa’s F is projected into her higher register as F5; the upper neighbor G♭5 is also used. These high notes are marked lunga assai (m. 64 =​54/​5/​4) and tenuto assai (m. 73 =​55/​2/​4) in the score. Example 9.18.  Norma, act 1, Duetto Adalgisa–​Pollione: A figured-​bass reduction of the scena

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  317 Example 9.19.  The scena in Schenkerian reduction

Adalgisa’s high register is then abandoned until the climactic A5 at the end of the scena. Pollione enters at m. 79 (55/​4/​1), emphasizing A♭4, the note that Adalgisa reached earlier only with the help of the orchestra. Pollione’s presence provides the answer to Adalgisa’s dilemma. She will continue to resist him for a time, but the outcome of their confrontation is preordained. Adalgisa’s perplexity is illustrated by a brusque omnibus progression in the orchestral strings (mm. 81–​82 =​55/​4/​3–​4); such chromatic passages are rare in Norma. When Adalgisa re-​ enters on C5, she and Pollione have executed a chromaticized voice exchange with the orchestral bass. In the process, the center of gravity of the vocal line has shifted slightly upward. From here on, Adalgisa and Pollione toss the thread of the vocal line rapidly back and forth. The next turning point comes at m. 93 (56/​2/​3), where Pollione leaps upward to F5 as he dismisses Adalgisa’s god Irminsul in favor of the god of Love. As with Adalgisa’s high notes, Pollione’s F5 is not part of the main melodic thread, which here leaps from B♭4 to D5. D5 moves to C5 at m. 96 (56/​3/​2) but returns at m. 99 (56/​4/​2), introduced by an appoggiatura E♭5. Over a V7–​i progression in A minor, the resolution D5–​C5 is merely hinted at in the vocal lines. Then, much as E♭5–​D5 had reached over at m. 99, E♮5–​D♯5 reaches over at m. 102 (56/​5/​2), underlined by a fortissimo augmented-​sixth chord.51 The climax of the scena, Adalgisa’s A5, marked con messa di voce assai lunga, follows immediately (see example 9.2 above). Her E4 appears to resolve Pollione’s D♯ in the same (literal) register, but functionally it is an octave too low. Again the orchestra steps in, at the beginning of the Allegro risoluto, to provide the “correct” resolution—​E5, which has suddenly become leading tone to F minor. The resolution of this leading tone is withheld as the tempo d’attacco begins; it is shown in parentheses in example 9.18. Pollione will sing F5 in m. 112 (57/​2/​3), but there is never a direct E5–​F5 resolution in the vocal line in the context of an F-​minor cadence. F minor is not the ultimate goal; A♭ major is. Example 9.19 converts the main points of example 9.18 into conventional Schenkerian notation. It emphasizes the role of reaching-​over in the gradual ascent 51 “Reaching-​over” (Schenker’s Übergreifen) describes a melodic process: an overall ascent is executed by means of shorter, stepwise descents, which often involve the resolution of dissonance. A classic example is the series of leapfrogging suspensions that opens Pergolesi’s Stabat mater.

318  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 9.20.  A further reduction of ­example 9.19

of the melodic thread. Almost every ascent is achieved by first resolving an unstable note downward; these mandatory resolutions are shown with downward-​ pointing arrows in example 9.19. The long ascent is achieved laboriously. Comparison with example 9.18 reveals that it is almost always Pollione who is responsible for ratcheting the line upward, and with it the dramatic tension. Once Pollione reaches D♯5 and the augmented-​sixth chord of A minor (m. 102), the further ascent to E5 and the implied F5 no longer require his direct agency. What he has set in motion will play itself out. Example 9.20 simplifies further. Here the series of reachings-​ over is explicitly contextualized in the key of B♭ major. Despite the tonicization of A minor beginning at m. 100 (56/​4/​3), the augmented-​sixth chord in m. 102 can be understood as a final representative of the original key. The augmented sixth, D♯, could have resolved downward as a dominant seventh, E♭ (see the crossed-​out arrow in example 9.20). The upward resolution D♯5–​E5 is thus seen even more clearly as the turning point from well-​behaved descent to self-​ perpetuating ascent—​from maintaining contact with the opening key to leaving it behind for good.

Tonal Pairing: The End of La straniera Like the quartet in Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto, analyzed in c­ hapter 7, the final number in La straniera fuses two numbers, leaving the first number incomplete. This time the quartet is the incomplete number; an orchestral transition connects it to a full-​ scale aria finale. In the published facsimile, the number bears the heading No. 11: Quartetto, but the editor, Philip Gossett, suggests Quartetto e Aria finale Alaide; the recently published critical edition has Recitativo, Quartetto e Aria finale di Alaide. When Ricordi published a vocal score of the opera in 1829, they issued Alaide’s aria separately. The vocal score published by Ricordi in 1903—​ and reprinted as recently as 1978—​divides the finale into two numbers, Scena e Quartetto and Scena, Coro ed Aria finale. The analysis below encompasses the entire finale, but the aria is treated in greater detail than the quartet. References to page numbers are to the 1903 Ricordi vocal score.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  319 Example 9.21.  La straniera, act 2, Quartetto: Movement I in durational reduction

Following a short recitative, which the facsimile links to the preceding number à la Rossini, the quartet consists of three movements. Movement I, beginning with the words “Che far vuoi tu?” (vocal score, p. 248), might be classified as a scena on account of its versi sciolti, but musically it functions as a tempo d’attacco, exhibiting the rhythmic and orchestral continuity typical of that movement-​ type. An astonishingly original creation for 1829, this tempo d’attacco sounds almost like middle-​period Verdi; Lippmann compares it to a duet from La forza del destino.52 The slow movement (vocal score, p. 251) is more conventional; Bellini adapted it from a sacred work composed during his student years. The tempo di mezzo (p. 257), after its first eleven measures, resumes the orchestral rhythm and general style of the tempo d’attacco, although its text consists of versi lirici. The expected stretta does not materialize. Movements I–​II of the quartet are in A♭ major. A figured-​bass sketch of movement I, in durational reduction, is offered in example 9.21; one quarter note of the reduction corresponds to one measure of the score. The end of the recitative is included to show that A♭ major is firmly established at the beginning. Slurs indicate stepwise bass motions. Arrows indicate local dominant-​ to-​ tonic progressions, regardless of inversion. Registral placements of bass notes do not always correspond to those in the score. A♭ major is quickly destabilized as a key—​first by the tonicization of its leading tone, G, then by becoming the goal of a V–​VI deceptive resolution in C minor. A sequence of similar resolutions leads in descending thirds from A♭ to F to D♭, the subdominant of A♭. Once D♭ has been lightly tonicized, a further descent in thirds leads through B♭ to G♭, the subdominant of the subdominant. In a move that occurs many times in Bianca e Fernando and La straniera, ♭VII is then led chromatically upward to the tonic note; the same bass progression, twice repeated, will end movement II. Movement I follows this chromatic ascent with an authentic cadence in A♭. Movement III begins in F minor, cadencing into F major at the Poco più sostenuto; this is where the music begins to recall movement I. Example 9.22, another durational reduction, sketches the remainder of the movement. Bellini’s harmonies progress at 52 Lippmann, “Su ‘La straniera,’ ” 594–​96.

320  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 9.22.  The end of movement III in durational reduction

Example 9.23.  A figured-​bass reduction of the aria finale

a rate of one chord per measure, represented by quarter notes in the example. As the brackets show, the bass twice ascends from A in the manner of a cadenza lunga or expanded cadential progression (ECP) in F major.53 Each time, the bass motion overshoots C (F:V) to cadence in another key—​first A minor, then A♭ major. These local tonics reflect parallel-​mode mixture in relation to F major—​respectively iiiT and ♭IIIT—​but the overall plan of the movement is progressive, not monotonal. Although the movement begins and ends in different keys, the return to A♭ means that the quartet’s three movements all end in the same key. Alaide’s aria consists of a brief scena (p. 260), a slow primo tempo (“Ciel pietoso,” p. 261), a lengthy tempo di mezzo initiated by the chorus (p. 264), and a fiery cabaletta (“Or sei pago,” p. 276). Example 9.23 is a bass-​line reduction, without rhythm, of the orchestral transition and the entire aria. Much detail has been omitted, especially in the choral portion of the tempo di mezzo. Whole notes denote root-​position triads that are strongly tonicized. A dotted tie indicates the prolongation of a harmony in the Schenkerian sense. All prolonged harmonies are either local tonics, local dominants, or a tonic that becomes a dominant. A bass note in parentheses indicates an unaccompanied resolution, where the voice 53 The term “expanded cadential progression” is Caplin’s. These cadences are also cadenze lunghe.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  321 Table 9.2. Bellini, La straniera, act 2 No. 7. Introduzione. Scena ed Aria di Valdeburgo: A♭ Recitativo dopo la Scena di Valdeburgo

No. 8. Scena e Duetto Arturo e Valdeburgo: B♭ No. 9. Scena d’Isoletta: G

No. 10. Coro dell’Imeneo [wedding chorus]: B♭

No. 11. Recitativo, Quartetto e Aria finale di Alaïde Quartetto: A♭

Aria: B♭→b♭→D♭

[Slow movement]: B♭

[Tempo di mezzo]: E♭, ending b♭:VA [Cabaletta]: b♭→D♭

resolves and the orchestra remains silent. As in earlier examples, rightward arrows designate dominant-​ to-​ tonic resolutions; leftward arrows mark back-​ relating dominants. A square bracket placed beneath two adjacent bass notes indicates a direct progression by descending major third. This aria is remarkable for its pairing of two tonics, B♭ and D♭. There are two tonics but three keys, because B♭ is used in both modes; this is another instance of the trio-​of-​keys technique. As in many operas of the 1820s, the slow movement and cabaletta begin with the same tonic. While the slow movement remains in B♭ major throughout, the cabaletta moves from B♭ minor to D♭ major. D♭ major also begins the scena. It would therefore be possible to view the aria as a whole, including the scena, as a monotonal structure in D♭. It would even be possible to view the entire finale—​quartet and aria together—​as a gigantic V–​I progression in D♭ major, with B♭ (either mode) acting as an extended detour to the submediant. Both interpretations are possible, but I reject them. As the saying goes, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. A better sense of the aria’s tonal progress may be gained from table 9.2, an overview of act 2. Titles of numbers are taken from the critical edition. Scena here refers to an entire solo scene, otherwise known as scena ed aria. The keys of recitatives are not included. Two keys, A♭ major and B♭ major, recur again and again.54 After the act has vacillated repeatedly between A♭ and B♭ major—​four and two flats respectively—​the scena of Alaide’s aria steps into the five-​flat system (refer to example 9.23). The scena prepares first the key of F minor (vocal score, p. 260), 54 Isoletta’s G-​major aria constitutes a tonal island within an act located firmly on the flat side of the tonal spectrum. Her tonal isolation reflects her dramatic isolation (Arturo cannot bring himself to marry her), which is even reflected in her name (isoletta means “small island”).

322  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 9.24.  The bass line of the aria finale in Schenkerian reduction

then that of B♭ minor (p. 261). Both minor keys turn unexpectedly into their parallel majors, moving from the one-​to the two-​flat system. The chorus that opens the tempo di mezzo moves one fifth flatward, to E♭ major. After seeming again to prepare F minor (p. 269), F major is revisited (pp. 270–​71). A sudden move from F:V to A♭:I accompanies the revelation that the title character (“the foreign woman”) is actually Queen Agnese of France. At this news Arturo, having spurned Isoletta at the altar and realizing that the Queen is unattainable, commits suicide (a sudden move to A major, initially heard as the Neapolitan of A♭). A seventh is added to the A major triad, recalling the “German” augmented sixth of D♭ that immediately preceded the scena (see the two asterisks in example 9.23). Instead of resolving to D♭ major as before, another downward shift by major third links D:V and B♭:V, introducing an extended dominant preparation for B♭ minor, the key in which the cabaletta will begin. Example 9.24 offers a Schenkerian reading of the aria’s bass line. Two levels are shown. The sparser level 2 shows that B♭, far from being subordinated to D♭, can be heard as prolonged from the beginning of movement I (the primo tempo) through the beginning of movement III (the cabaletta). The attempt to return to D♭ during the latter part of the tempo di mezzo, visible in level 1, is thrown off track by the B♭-​minor reaction to Arturo’s suicide. The D♭-​major potential of the chord at the second asterisk—​ a potential “German” augmented sixth—​ is realized by the cabaletta’s eventual move to that key.

Tonality and Sonorità: The End of Norma Norma, high priestess of the druids in Roman-​occupied Gaul, has violated her vow of chastity, having borne two children with the Roman proconsul Pollione. Pollione’s amorous attentions have recently turned to a novice priestess, Adalgisa, who is bound by the same vow as Norma. In the finale of act 2 (and of the opera), Norma confronts Pollione, who refuses to abandon Adalgisa but pleads with

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  323 Norma to spare her life. Norma calls the druids together to denounce a traitorous priestess. Instead of denouncing Adalgisa, she denounces herself. Pollione, deeply moved, decides to share Norma’s fate, while Oroveso, Norma’s father and chief of the druids, promises to spare Norma’s children. Norma has not yet appeared in the complete critical edition of Bellini’s works. A separate critical edition, commissioned by Cecilia Bartoli, is available for hire; I have not seen it.55 Existing editions disagree about many aspects of the second-​ act finale, including the length of the instrumental prelude to the chorus “Guerra, Guerra,” how repetitions within that chorus should be notated, and the length of the chorus’s coda (Bellini composed two versions, one much longer than the other). If one compares published scores to the autograph, further disagreements arise.56 Scholars cited previously—​Raffaele Monterosso, Charles Brauner, and David Kimbell—​have rehearsed the textual issues that bedevil the opera. Because the number of measures in the finale varies between and even within editions, I will refer to page numbers in the Kalmus vocal score, which is in the public domain and available online. Two facsimiles of the autograph have been published; the more recent one includes all surviving sketches for the opera.57 The finale of Norma has long been regarded as the composer’s supreme achievement. It lasts slightly over half an hour in performance. Its final section, labeled Aria finale in the first edition, has been especially admired. Schopenhauer wrote of it: It should here be mentioned that the genuinely tragic effect of the catastrophe, the hero’s resignation and spiritual exaltation produced by it, seldom appear so purely motivated and distinctly expressed as in the opera Norma, where it comes in the duet [sic] Qual cor tradisti, qual cor perdesti. Here the conversion of the will is clearly indicated by the quietness suddenly introduced into the music. Quite apart from its excellent music, and from the diction that can only be that of a libretto, and considered only according to its motives and to its interior economy, this piece is in general a tragedy of extreme perfection, a true model of the tragic disposition of the motives, of the tragic progress of the action, and of tragic development, together with the effect of these on the frame of mind of the heroes, which surmounts the world. This effect then passes on to the spectator; in fact, the effect here reached is the more natural and simple and the more characteristic of the true nature of tragedy, as no Christians or even Christian sentiments appear in it.58

Joseph Kerman and Thomas S. Grey have taken the “groundswells” in the aria’s coda as the starting point for an Italian operatic tradition.59 One of the opera’s “tragically sublime moments,” in the words of John Deathridge, is the 55 Bärenreiter BA07641-​72. 56 In the autograph, Pollione’s line “Dammi il ferro” occurs in the same measure as the final A♭ chord of the preceding duet. The first edition (Ricordi, 1832) treats “Dammi il ferro” as the beginning of a new number, so it places a bar line between the duet and the recitative. All later editions follow the first edition in this respect, although the autograph’s reading has much to recommend it. 57 Norma. Facsimile della partitura autografa (Rome, 1935); Norma: tragedia lirica in two acts, ed. Philip Gossett. Early Romantic Opera 4, 2 vols. (New York: Garland Press, 1983). 58 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E. F. J. Payne, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1969), 2:435–​36. 59 Kerman and Grey, “Verdi’s ‘Groundswells.’ ” See the discussion of codas in ­chapter 5.

324  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera unaccompanied cadence on Norma’s words “Son io,” shown earlier in example 9.3. This is the moment when Norma identifies herself as the priestess who has violated her vows. That a three-​note cadence, sung mostly without orchestral support, can have such an overwhelming effect is remarkable, and one wishes to know how this is possible. Deathridge suggests an answer: Hanslick called Bellini the last of the naive masters. Yet there is nothing naive about the way familiar recitative and coloratura formulae have been made part of an overall dynamic, irrespective of an “objective” view of their individual musical merits. Nor is there anything simple-​minded about Bellini’s genius for transforming the routine devices behind, say, Norma’s “Son io” and “un prego ancor” (the first a banal cadence, the second a conventional piece of fioritura) into tragically sublime moments in the closing finale. These are not “long, long, long melodies,” but fleeting and precisely calculated details in a grand design that has been carefully prepared from the outset.60

In this analysis I address one aspect of the finale’s grand design: its long-​range tonal plan. At a time when I knew Norma only from LP recordings, I was already mesmerized by “Son io” and sensed that it must be the culmination of some large musical as well as dramatic process. I had never studied the score and did not do so for quite a few years. Except for certain obvious divisions, I gave no thought to where numbers in the opera begin and end. The Schirmer vocal score, which I acquired at some point, calls “Qual cor tradisti” Aria finale, just like the first edition, but it fails to indicate that this aria forms part of a larger number. Only much later did I become aware that Bellini wrote Finale dell’ atto 2.do above the orchestral prelude in C major that introduces Norma’s recitative “Ei tornerà” (Kalmus vocal score, p. 138).61 At that point I understood: the finale begins in C major, and “Son io” is related to this opening. The chorus “Guerra, guerra,” which follows “Ei tornerà,” was originally composed in C major, although the final version is in A minor.62 Thus, in Bellini’s original conception, the first large section of the finale, a scena and chorus, was entirely in C major. In the opera’s final version, the connection between C-​major passages is less immediately evident. As we shall see, however, the connection is supported by a sonorità. A useful overview of the finale is provided by David Kimbell.63 The number falls into three large sections, which correspond precisely to the three plates devoted to it in the first edition (Ricordi plate numbers 5909–​5911).64 In table 9.3, section headings are taken from the first edition, where the finale is labeled Finale 60 John Deathridge, “Reminiscences of ‘Norma,’” in Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus, ed. Hermann Danuser (Laaber: Laaber-​Verlag, 1988), 223–​27; 226. 61 In a copyist’s manuscript at the Conservatorio Cherubini in Florence, the heading at this point (act 2, folio 49r) is Scena e Finale Secondo. Subdivisions of the finale are not indicated except by tempo marking. 62 See the transcriptions in Francesco Pastura, Bellini secondo la storia (Parma: Guanda, 1959), 567–​ 70, and Monterosso, “Per un’edizione di Norma,” 501–​4. 63 Kimbell, Norma, 38–​41 and 64–​66. 64 The plate numbers for the first edition given by Kimbell are incorrect. The first edition of the vocal score was preceded by an arrangement for piano solo and by individual pieces arranged for piano

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  325 Table 9.3. Bellini, Norma, act 2, Finale (plate numbers from 1832 Ricordi vocal score) Plate 5909 Scena che precede il Coro

C→a:VA

Coro (Guerra, guerra)

a→A (Picardy third)

Plate 5910 Recitativo e Duetto (In mia man alfin tu sei) [Scena]

Modulatory; ends on F:VA

[Duetto] F→A♭ Plate 5911 Recitativo ed Aria Finale (Qual cor tradisti) [Scena] →C:PAC (“Son io”), then to G:VA [Aria] G→C→e→E [Stretta] e

II.do. Words enclosed in square brackets do not appear there. I have added the principal keys for each section, including only those keys in which a conclusive PAC is heard.65 The duet lacks a tempo d’attacco, but it retains the other three movements of la solita forma: adagio, tempo di mezzo, and cabaletta. The modulation from F to A♭ occurs during the tempo di mezzo, which ends with a direct move from F:V7 to A♭:V7 (vocal score, p. 160).66 The aria finale is highly unconventional, and hardly recognizable as an aria.67 Apparently the librettist, Felice Romani, did not intend it as one. In the libretto, “Son io” concludes a stretch of versi sciolti, suggesting the end of a scena. The four hands (Adamo & Lippmann, 542). The two parts of plate 5909, scena and chorus, were sold separately. 65 A similar table appears in Kimbell, Norma, 125. Kimbell’s table includes a few intermediate keys not shown here. 66 A juxtaposition of the same two dominants may be found in the Scherzo of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A Minor, D. 845 (op. 42), mm. 29–​41. In both works, but more clearly in the Schubert, D♭ acts as both ninth above C and seventh above E♭. The resemblance between the two pieces was pointed out to me by Carl Schachter. Because the Schubert was published in 1826, Bellini, who lived in Austrian-​ruled Milan from 1827 to 1833, could have encountered it, although Schubert is never mentioned in Bellini’s correspondence. 67 Kimbell suggests (Norma, 65) that the title Aria finale was used for diplomatic reasons, to salve the ego of the original and subsequent prima donnas.

326  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera following lines switch to versi lirici, but Bellini continues the recitative texture, declining Romani’s apparent invitation to write a tempo d’attacco. Bellini himself referred to this part of the finale as “a concertato and a stretta.”68 “Qual cor tradisti” (vocal score, p. 168), in which Norma and Pollione sing one complete strophe each, bears some formal resemblance to a duet cabaletta, as Kimbell has noted; the movement might also be compared to the slow movement of a duet. A faster tempo di mezzo (p. 173) leads to the aria’s final movement (p. 176), in which Norma’s single E-​minor period—​resembling the first statement of a slow cabaletta—​is followed immediately by a double coda in E major in which the chorus participates; this is where the “groundswells” occur.69 A very brief stretta in E minor (p. 181) accompanies the final preparations for Norma and Pollione to meet their deaths.70 The harmonic trajectory of the finale is broadly tripartite, like its external form: C major→A minor (scena and chorus); F major→A♭ major (duet); C major→E minor (scena, aria, and stretta). I have omitted the scena of the duet because it fails to establish any key firmly. All adjacencies in this key scheme are readily translatable into neo-​Riemannian terms: R; L–​PR; LP–​L. The double coda and stretta involve successive applications of the P transformation, mapping E minor onto itself. If we examine the more detailed list of keys in table 9.3, we may notice the finale’s symmetrical balance on the circle of fifths. The neutral system, C major/​A minor, forms the central point. The one-​sharp system (G major/​E minor) balances the one-​flat system (F major). Four flats (F minor/​A♭ major) are balanced by four sharps (E major). The finale’s three parts may be characterized as respectively neutral, flat, and neutral-​moving-​to-​sharp. For present purposes I disregard the chorus’s A-​major coda (more on it below). The finale begins with Norma convinced that Pollione will return to her in life. It ends with his doing so in death. In light of this catastrophic reversal, it is fitting that the music begins in the major mode and ends in the minor with a different tonic. In the abbreviated key scheme given earlier, C–​a–​F–​A♭–​C–​e, the pitch class C is a member of every tonic triad except the last, where C moves to B through the Riemannian operation Leittonwechsel. Nevertheless, the sonorità that Bellini places in Norma’s vocal line is not C but E, specifically E5. Example 9.25 is a voice-​leading graph of the finale through “Son io.” The graph highlights those moments in which Norma’s sonorità is present. These are mostly passages in which Norma sings, but several times the choral sopranos, or Norma’s confidante Clotilde, take up her characteristic pitch. The most notable of these instances is the chorus “Guerra, guerra,” which is strongly centered on E5 melodically. The short version of the chorus’s ending maintains E5 to the end of the choral soprano line (vocal score, p. 147), while the long version, thought to have been composed earlier, features a more conventional fifth-​descent, 68 Luisa Cambi, Vincenzo Bellini: Epistolario (Verona: Mondadori, 1943), 297; quoted in Kimbell, Norma, 65. 69 On double codas, see ­chapter 5. 70 In this context stretta refers merely to a movement in fast tempo, not to a formal type.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  327 Example 9.25.  A Schenkerian reduction through “Son io”

328  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 9.25.  Continued

5̂–4̂–3̂–2̂–​1̂ in A major. In the short version, A major represents a Picardy third in an A-​minor cadence; in the long version, A major is a key in its own right. For reasons of sonorità and key scheme, the short version results in a tighter structure.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  329 The sonorità of E5 is foreshadowed in the orchestral prelude (p. 138), but it is established by Norma’s repetition of the words “Ei tornerà” (“he will return”) in the first and fourth measures of her vocal line. E5 moves to F5 when the music moves to F major (pp. 138–​39), but C major and E5 return when Norma sings “Troppo il felon presume” (“the criminal presumes too much”), recapitulating the melodic line of “ei tornerà.” A progression in descending fifths leads to E♭ major for the striking of the sacred gong, summoning the druids (p. 140, last system). The choral sopranos, in C minor, inflect the sonorità to E♭5 (p. 142). In the last four measures of this scena (p. 143), Norma recaptures E5 with the neighboring progression E5–​ F5–​E5. The chorus then erupts in A-​minor shouts of “Guerra!” (“War!”), set to the figure D♯5–​E5–​F5–​E5—​Norma’s sonorità and its two half-​step neighbors. This figure, foreshadowed by the use of E♭5 and F5 in the scena, recurs throughout the finale in various guises. The following scena, like the first one, begins with a C major chord (p. 151), but example 9.25 suggests a voice-​ leading connection between the immediately surrounding bass notes, two instances of A2. Norma enters on D5 and ascends to D♯5 five measures later. It is Clotilde who moves the line to E5 at the Allegro assai moderato (p. 151). This E-​minor passage begins a motion into first the one-​sharp, then the two-​sharp system. The sharp-​side excursion collapses with the failed D-​ major cadence (“Feriam!”), when Norma grabs the knife to stab Pollione but finds herself unable to do so (p. 153). F♯–​E tops the orchestral texture above the cadential dominant of D major, making the collapse to a unison B♭ all the more striking. In the duet’s F-​major slow movement, Norma sings mostly in a lower register; her line descends by step from A4 to F4, but she touches periodically on F5. Pollione, beginning from C5 and its upper neighbor D♭5, shifts the tessitura upward as the tempo di mezzo begins. Between them, Pollione and Norma trace the descending third F5–​E♭5–​D♭5, which Norma repeats in her D-​flat-​major passage (p. 159). From here the tessitura descends until Norma has cornered Pollione with her threat to have Adalgisa killed: “Preghi alfine? Indegno! è tardi” (“You beg at last? Worthless one! It is late”). The local key is F minor, and Norma’s line leads F4–​E♮4, returning to a lower-​register version of her sonorità. Here we have another C major harmony, acting as a local dominant; it is preceded by an augmented-​sixth chord on D♭. In effect, we have returned to the harmonic state that preceded the duet (p. 155, systems 1–​2). The continuation will be different this time. The cabaletta (p. 160) centers melodically on E♭5, a tone that is simultaneously Kopfton and sonorità for this A♭-​major movement. Meanwhile Pollione, still pleading for Adalgisa’s life, repeats Norma’s F4–​E4 in the lower register of his own voice, accompanied by another dominantized chord of C major. The peripeteia occurs in the scena of the aria. As Pollione and Norma chase each other’s lines upward, from E♭5 to A♭5, woodwinds and horns at the Allegro (p. 164) lead toward a D♭-​major cadence, sounding F–​E♭ over the cadential 64–53. Like the earlier attempt to cadence in D major, this cadence fails; the downward violin scales and other details of the orchestration are identical both times. Again the sacrificial knife is the object of onstage contention. The winds take up E♭ once more at the fortissimo, as the violins’ arpeggio reaches its climax on E♭6. The

330  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera sudden entry of the brass, on an E-​major chord topped by E4, represents the melodic move E♭–​E♮. We are crossing the enharmonic seam: A♭:♭VI becomes A:V. Norma reclaims her sonorità with these words, directed to the druids: “All’ira vostra nuova vittima io svelo” (“To your fury I reveal a new victim”). As on previous occasions, Norma’s sonorità is associated with her power, even when that power is illusory. The chromatic passage from this point to “Son io” is based on a chain of descending fifths, E–​A–​D–​G–​C (example 9.25, end). Each of these harmonies is major. Because E major was itself reached as A♭:♭VI, the motion from the end of the duet to “Son io” invokes the major-​third cycle A♭–​E–​C, which we have encountered in Rossini’s Zelmira, Le siège de Corinthe, and Guillaume Tell. Following E major and A major, another cadential progression in D major begins to take shape (p. 185, last system). It, too, fails; the chromaticized pre-​dominant harmony on G♯ is transformed, over the course of seven measures, into an augmented-​sixth chord on A♭.71 The C-​major cadence on “Son io” follows. In the passage that leads to this cadence, upper-​voice activity is divided between Norma and Pollione. Norma begins with the confident reclamation of E5 (“All’ ira vostra”), but she falters soon afterward, beset by guilt and uncertainty. Pollione seizes the melodic initiative: the initial move E5–​D5 is Norma’s, but the following three upper-​voice notes in the example, F♯5–​E5–​F5, are his. Norma echoes his F5, a diminished seventh above G♯, and resolves it downward to E♭5. Accompanied by the second violins, Pollione pushes E♭ back up to E♮, completing yet another traversal of the double-​neighbor pattern around E. In example 9.25 I have re-​notated Pollione’s E♭5 as D♯5 to emphasize this upward resolution, which parallels the E–​F of “Norma, pietà!” In Schenkerian terms, the G5 in “Son io” acts as cover tone to D5, the 2̂ of an Urlinie descent in C major. (E–​D, 3̂–2̂, is sounded by the first horn.) At this point a large C-​major structure within the finale ends. That structure is sketched, in much reduced form, in example 9.26. This sketch reduces out the local Urlinien in F major and A♭ major, the duet’s two pezzi chiusi, treating them as lower-​level linear progressions. F and A♭ are intermediate points in the tonal journey, not goals in their own right. The C major triad is seen to govern the music from the beginning of the first scena to the end of the second scena, by which point C major has become (locally) F:V. The sequence scena–​chorus–​scena constitutes a single prolongational unit, unified by Norma’s E5. The duet’s slow movement seems to move decisively away from C, but C major returns, again as a local dominant, when Norma snarls “è tardi.”72 In turn, the cabaletta’s A♭ major forms part of a motion in descending major thirds, described above, from C major to E major. Although A♭ is a local tonic while C and E sound locally less stable, it is C and E that shape the finale’s long-​range tonal dynamic. They also accommodate E5, which returns as soon as E major has sounded. Example 9.27 sketches the remainder of the finale. The last part of the scena, before the aria’s primo tempo, modulates from C toward G, using an omnibus 71 The Kalmus vocal score lacks the flat sign on the bass A, present in both autograph and first edition. 72 Both instances of C-​as-​dominant are embellished by augmented-​sixth chords on D♭.

Example 9.26.  A further reduction of ­example 9.25

Example 9.27.  A Schenkerian reduction of the music following “Son io”

332  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

progression that prolongs the diminished-​seventh chord F♯–​A–​C–​E♭ as Pollione and Norma declaim on the note E♭ (vocal score, p. 167). The next move is to a “German” diminished-​third chord of G minor and a cadential dominant in that key; E♭5 resolves to D5 (p. 167, last system). Much like the primo tempo of the duet, that of the aria features a 3̂–2̂–1̂ descent, here in G major. 5̂, D5, persists above this descent and continues the same pitch (=​ C:2̂) from the end of the scena. Norma and Pollione share D5 during the movement’s choral conclusion. The opening of the tempo di mezzo recalls that of the duet’s scena: an initial C major refers to that key in an associative sense while assuming a subordinate role in the voice leading. Here the progression I–​V in C major prolongs the G major harmony on which the primo tempo ended. G major changes its meaning from tonic to dominant. As example 9.27 shows, the extended V of A minor that follows (pp. 173–​74) acts as a passing chord within a prolonged V of C. It is over this passing dominant, an E major triad, that Norma once again lays claim to her sonorità as she suddenly realizes that her children will be left without a mother (p. 173, last system). In answer to the druids’ question—​is she really guilty?—​Norma replies in tones of old, holding out her sonorità while completing another C-​major cadence. Like “Son io,” her cadence at “oltre ogni umana idea” (“[guilty] beyond all human understanding”) seems incompletely articulated: timpani and bass drum are heard on the cadential dominant, fortissimo, but they are withheld on the tonic, where the strings begin a new idea, pianissimo. Closure in C major is again flawed. Instead of closing on C5, the structural line continues another step downward, to B4 above e:V, after C has become the bass of an augmented-​sixth chord. The E-​minor movement—​here regarded as a slow cabaletta—​and its E-​major double coda follow similar voice-​leading paths. In both cases, B4 acts not as Kopfton but as starting point for a slow ascent to 3,̂ first G5 (in E minor) and then G♯5 (in E major). The arrival at the high 3̂ is climactic in each case but particularly the second, the “groundswell” described by Kerman and Grey. Descent from 3̂ is straightforward the first time, less so the second (see the trombones in the full score). The final stretta repeats the 3̂–2̂–1̂ descent in E minor. This time Norma does not reach her sonorità; the last utterance of her operatic life breaks off on 2̂ (p. 183). Her power gone, her life moments from ending, the very pitch that defined her is no longer hers.73 Her voice is swallowed up by the chorus of druids crying for her death. Example 9.28 summarizes the finale. Although the key changes from C major to E minor, Norma’s E5 is present at both beginning and end. The bass moves through two harmonic circuits in C major, I–​III♯–​V–​I and I–​II♯–​V–​I.74 Each circuit is accompanied by an attempted Urlinie descent, but, as described above, 73 E5 is Norma’s sonorità only in the finale, not in the opera as a whole. 74 “Harmonic circuit” is my translation of Schenker’s term Stufenkreis, used in Der Tonwille (Vienna, 1921–​1924) and the first two volumes of Das Meisterwerk in der Musik (Munich, 1925–​1926). It refers to a progression of the fundamental bass from an initial tonic, through an intermediate harmony, to a dominant and a final tonic. The harmonic circuits discussed here end with V and I in root position, but the concept does not require root positions.

  Bellini and the New Diatonicism  T  333 Example 9.28.  A middleground graph of the Finale

neither descent receives adequate orchestral support. The problem of achieving closure in C major is transcended by the move to E minor. Each of her attempts to close in C is associated with Norma’s accepting responsibility for her actions. The move to E seems to represent a widening of dramatic focus to include Norma’s children, her father Oroveso, and the social order of the druids. Although earlier parts of the opera make extensive use of G major, E minor and E major are reserved for the end. This analysis has not privileged pezzi chiusi—​self-​contained lyrical movements that elicit applause. The structure of this thirty-​minute finale depends on them less than one might expect. The finale’s C-​major opening marks the beginning of a scena. The first of the two C-​major cadences occurs during another scena; the second cadence occurs during a recitative-​like passage within a tempo di mezzo. The finale’s tonal structure is anchored, in other words, by music whose formal organization is relatively loose. An account of tonal structure based on pezzi chiusi would discount both C-​major cadences, emphasizing instead the third-​relations F–​A♭ (duet) and G–​e (aria). The key-​based analysis in table 9.3 reveals some interesting things, but it misses something perhaps more significant: the persistence and organizing power of the C major triad and Norma’s sonorità of E5. As is perhaps clearest from example 9.26, C-​major-​as-​dominant, often approached through some combination of D♭ and B♮, plays almost as important a role as C-​major-​as-​tonic. By elevating the musical importance of recitative, Bellini calls into question the primacy of the pezzo chiuso. Bellini’s finale is a musically and dramatically integrated scene-​complex, with an ancestry that may be traced from the reform operas of Gluck, through Spontini’s La vestale (an obvious model for Norma), to the last act of Rossini’s Otello and the finale ultimo of Bellini’s own I Capuleti e i Montecchi.75 Less radical than the Capuleti finale because it incorporates pezzi chiusi, the Norma finale arguably strikes a better balance between dramatic and musical values.76 75 See the discussion of Otello in c­ hapter 7. 76 The finale to I Capuleti was thought so ineffective in the nineteenth century that the tomb scene from Nicola Vaccai’s Giulietta e Romeo (1825) was often substituted for it.

C HA P T E R

Ten

Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism

Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–​ 1864) was six months older than Rossini, but artistically he was Rossini’s younger colleague. The same may be said of Saverio Mercadante (1795–​ 1870) and Gaetano Donizetti (1797–​ 1848), who will be considered in the next chapter. All three were near to Rossini in age and were active while he was still writing for the stage. Yet their most successful operas were composed after Rossini’s retirement. Meyerbeer was a cosmopolitan composer, writing German operas for Germany, Italian operas for Italy, and French operas for Paris. To his French and Italian contemporaries, he was the preeminent German composer of his generation, chief representative of “the German school,” as Fétis put it in a review of Robert le diable.1 That Meyerbeer played this role, rather than Mendelssohn or Schumann, speaks to opera’s continued hegemony in the hierarchy of musical genres at a time when instrumental music was gaining prestige in French (though not Italian) musical life.2 Meyerbeer’s cosmopolitanism would be held against him by a younger and more nationalist generation of German critics, including Richard Wagner. In the 1830s and 1840s, however, Meyerbeer was understood to be one of a long line of German composers—​ including Handel, Gluck, and Mozart—​ who had gone abroad honorably, either for study or to win operatic commissions. The critic who pointed out this historical continuity was none other than the young Richard Wagner, who counted Meyerbeer’s absorption of Italian and French musical styles as an advantage.3 Meyerbeer’s Jewishness is not especially germane to this book, but in today’s world it is difficult to ignore. It was less openly discussed before Wagner’s Das Judentum in der Musik (1850) than it came to be in later decades. Judaism was something that Meyerbeer shared with the French composers Halévy and Alkan; with his publisher Maurice Schlesinger; with the German composers Mendelssohn, Moscheles, and Ferdinand David, and the German critic A. B. Marx; and with Basevi in Italy. The primo ottocento was a time of Jewish emancipation, but only in 1 Revue musicale, Vme année, no. 42 (26 November 1831): 336–​39; 336. 2 The Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire was founded in 1828 by François-​Antoine Habeneck; its performances of Beethoven’s symphonies were celebrated. A comparable phenomenon did not exist in Italy until the 1860s. See the essays by Wolfgang Witzenmann and Guido Salvetti in Friedrich Lippmann et al., eds., Analecta musicologica 22. Studien zur italienischen Musikgeschichte (Laaber: Laaber-​Verlag, 1984), 457–​77 and 479–​95. 3 See Thomas S. Grey, “Wagner Admires Meyerbeer (Les Huguenots),” in Grey, ed., Richard Wagner and His World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 335–​46.

The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0011

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  335 Western Europe. As Balzac put it in a letter from Kiev, “In Germany, France, the Jews are people like you and me . . . whereas from Krakow onward, the real Talmudists are revealed.”4 Meyerbeer’s principal teacher was Vogler, a pivotal figure in the transition from eighteenth-​to nineteenth-​century harmonic theory.5 Vogler, a pupil of the Italian theorist Francesco Antonio Vallotti,6 also taught Peter von Winter and Carl Maria von Weber—​composers, respectively, of Das unterbrochene Opferfest and Der Freischütz—​ and Gottfried Weber, the theorist who popularized Vogler’s system of Roman-​numeral analysis.7 Vogler himself pioneered the study of harmonic progressions based on the chromatic scale, a scale that he was among the first to recognize as such. In his early publications he calls it the “mixed scale,”8 but by 1802 it was the “chromatic scale,” of which he offers the following definition: “Chromatic is what one calls the colorful scale of 12 tones, Diatonic the simple one of 7 tones, which has no more tones than the key [has]; for there is no chromatic key, because no more than 7 tones may lay claim to the tonic, but the 12 tones relate to all keys.”9 To borrow a term from Schoenberg, Vogler’s chromatic scale is pantonal, like Fétis’s ordre omnitonique.10 Vogler put his theory to use in the progression known today as the chromatic omnibus, which he regarded as a harmonization of the chromatic scale by analogy with the diatonic Rule of the Octave. The omnibus made its debut in 1776 and appeared in slightly different versions in Vogler’s later writings. German composers from C. P. E. Bach to Beethoven, Schubert, and Weber seized on the omnibus and used it prominently in their music.11 In German-​speaking countries, it quickly became known as the Teufelsmühle (devil’s mill).

See John H. Baron, “A Golden Age for Jewish Musicians in Paris: 1820–​65,” Musica Judaica 12 (1991–​1992): 30–​51. Ruth HaCohen expresses a more skeptical view in The Music Libel against the Jews (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). See especially ­chapter 4, to which the Balzac quotation appears as epigraph. 5 See Robert Wason, Viennese Harmonic Theory from Albrechtsberger to Schenker and Schoenberg (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985); Floyd Grave and Margaret Grave, In Praise of Harmony: The Teachings of Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988); and David Damschroder, Thinking about Harmony: Historical Perspectives on Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 6 On Vallotti and the Paduan school of harmonic theory, see ­chapter 2. 7 An 1865 obituary for Meyerbeer acknowledges Vogler as “intellectual father” to both Weber and Meyerbeer. Éloge de Meyerbeer par M. Beule (Paris: Académie des Beaux-​Arts, 1865), 20–​22. For a different perspective on the Vogler-​Weber-​Meyerbeer “school” see Dana Gooley, Fantasies of Improvisation: Free Playing in Nineteenth-​Century Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 25–​61. 8 The term “mixed scale” (“vermischte Tonleiter”) appears in Tonwissenschaft und Tonsetzkunst (1776), Kuhrpfälzische Tonschule (1778), and Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule (1779). 9 Vogler, Handbuch zur Harmonielehre (Prague, 1802), 3: “Chromatisch nennt man die bunte Leiter von 12 Tönen, und Diatonisch die einfache von 7 Tönen, die nicht mehr Töne als die Tonart selbst hat; denn es gibt keine chromatische Tonart, weil nicht mehr als 7 Töne Anspruch auf den Hauptton haben können, aber die 12 Töne im wechselseitigen Bezug mit allen Tonarten stehen.” 10 For Fétis, see ­chapter 2. 11 The C. P. E. Bach example occurs in his Rondo in A Minor, H. 262 (1780). The passage is quoted in Edward Aldwell, Carl Schachter, and Allen Cadwallader, Harmony and Voice Leading, 5th ed. (Boston: Cengage, 2019), 626–​27. 4

336  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.1.  Förster, Anleitung zum General-​Bass, ­figure 134: Teufelsmühle

Example 10.1 shows a version of the Teufelsmühle—​so named—​as transmitted by the Viennese theorist Emanuel Aloys Förster in 1804. Förster credits the progression to Vogler, but he disputes Vogler’s idea of a “chromatic scale.”12 Numerals between the staves are thoroughbass figures; the same pattern of three chord types—​dominant seventh, diminished seventh, and minor 64—​repeats in each measure, underlining the triple meter. Numerals beneath the bass line are Förster’s; they show diatonic scale degrees in assumed keys. Each dominant seventh chord is assigned to 5 ̂of some key, each diminished-​seventh chord to the leading tone of a different key—​the first key’s relative minor, if the first key is assumed to be major. The bass of each 64 chord is identified as both a local tonic (resolving the previous leading tone) and a dominant, the characteristic degree for the bass note of a 64 chord. In m. 1 alone, Förster finds three keys: C major, A minor, and D minor. Measure 2 brings E♭ major, C minor, and F minor; m. 3 adds G♭ major, E♭ minor, and A♭ minor. Pantonal indeed! Still, the diatonic affiliations of each note explain why Förster denied the status of “scale” to the twelve-​note chromatic collection.13 Vogler’s preoccupation with scales reaches its peak in a didactic cantata entitled Die Scala (“The Scale,” 1810). The work is scored for soprano soloist, chorus, and orchestra.14 Vogler provides his own analysis. After passages in which diatonic scales are used as cantus firmi in both upper voices and bass, Vogler proceeds to the chromatic sequence shown in example 10.2 (except for the bass, orchestral parts are omitted). He writes: “The continuation is characterized by the [legato] connection of tones and the syllables ‘Sol–​Fa,’ through which the chromatic

12 Förster, Anleitung zum General-​Bass (Vienna, 1804), 37: “Herr Abt Vogler nennt diesen Gang in seinem Handbuch zur Harmonielehre u. s. w. die chromatische Leiter, von der ich aber als Leiter keinen Begriff habe.” 13 Förster’s analysis of the Teufelsmühle closely resembles, and may derive from, a description by Vogler in Kuhrpfälzische Tonschule, II. Theil (1778), 176–​83. There Vogler emphasizes that in his progression “these modulations are based more on the placement [of each chord] than on harmony, because no dissonances are resolved, and the unity of key is not observed in the slightest, since one can never know which is the main key of the piece” (“Zu bemerken aber ist, daß diese Ausweichungen sich mehr auf die Lage als Harmonie gründen; denn es werden keine Uebelklänge aufgelöst, und die Einheit des Tones ist nicht im mindesten beobachtet, da man niemal wissen kann, welches der Hauptton des Stückes sei”; 182). 14 The full score (Munich: Falter und Sohn, n.d.) may be found at http://​imslp.org/​wiki/​Die​_​Sca​ la_​(Vog​ler,_​Georg​_​Jos​eph).

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  337 Example 10.2.  Vogler, Die Scala, mm. 92–​130: Choral parts (simplified) and orchestral bass

(colorful) scale of twelve tones shimmers.”15 The sequence moves in four-​bar units. Seven such units plus one measure—​a total of 29 measures—​lead the basses and altos from F up to C, covering exactly eight pitches. Sopranos and tenors counterpoint this ascent with descending whole-​tone fragments, following the 15 “Der Fortschritt der Stimmbildung äussert sich durch das Verbinden der Töne und der Sylben Sol Fa, wodurch die chromatische (bunte) Tonleiter zu 12 Töne durchschimmert.”

338  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera “odd” whole-​tone scale (C21) in the soprano and the “even” whole-​tone scale (C20) in the tenor. Between them, the twelve tones of Vogler’s chromatic scale are exhausted. Meyerbeer is a key figure in the history of nineteenth-​century Italian opera for at least three reasons, which I list in ascending order of importance: (1) Following in the steps of German composers from Handel to Simon Mayr, Meyerbeer went to Italy to learn the operatic craft at its source; except for Otto Nicolai, he was the last important German composer to do so. Between 1817 and 1824, Meyerbeer composed six operas for Italian theaters. Margherita d’Anjou, an opera semiseria, was a success at La Scala in 1820. His last Italian opera, Il crociato in Egitto, created a furore at La Fenice the year after Rossini’s Semiramide premiered there. Il crociato was soon performed throughout Europe and beyond, reaching Havana by 1828. Its musical style owes something to Spontini and Mayr, but something also to the neoclassical side of Rossini. Where Meyerbeer exceeds even Rossini is in the sumptuousness and detail of his orchestration. Harmonically, Il crociato is less adventurous than Rossini’s serious operas of the early 1820s—​Maometto II, Zelmira, and Semiramide. (2) In addition to sharing a theater with Semiramide, Il crociato shared that opera’s librettist, Gaetano Rossi. It was with Rossi that Meyerbeer and Rossini separately developed a working method that both retained when working with later librettists. Rather than receiving and setting finished texts, Meyerbeer and Rossini worked directly with Rossi as their libretti were being fashioned; the composers exercised considerable control over the operas’ dramatic as well as musical shape. This new relation between librettist and composer would be continued by Meyerbeer and Eugène Scribe in Paris, and by Verdi and his librettists in Italy. (3) Meyerbeer’s greatest importance for Italy lies not in his Italian career but in the four grands opéras he wrote for Paris to libretti either partly or wholly by Scribe: Robert le diable (premiered 1831), Les Huguenots (premiered 1836), Le prophète (premiered 1849), and L’Africaine (premiered posthumously in 1865). Unlike the rapid composition that was typical of Italian theaters, each of Meyerbeer’s grands opéras was crafted over a period of at least five years; L’Africaine took nearly thirty from initial conception to first performance. That Meyerbeer was independently wealthy obviated the need for rapid creation. The peculiar rhythms of the Paris Opéra, lamented in later years by Verdi, also discouraged speed. Grand opéra—​a serious drama in five acts, based on an historical incident and incorporating ballet and spectacular scenic effects—​is usually said to begin with Auber’s La muette de Portici (1828); there is less agreement about its ending date. Meyerbeer’s grands opéras were not only phenomenally successful but phenomenally influential in both their dramaturgy and their musical language. It is their impact on younger Italian composers, especially Verdi, that justifies their inclusion in this book. Only L’Africaine is omitted, because its premiere postdates 1859. In the realm of harmony, a 1995 study by the Czech musicologist Milan Pospíšil reveals the specificity of Verdi’s musical debt to Meyerbeer.16 Because Pospíšil’s 16 Milan Pospíšil, “Verdi—​‘Harmoniste à la façon de Meyerbeer’?” in Giacomo Meyerbeer—​Musik als Welterfahrung: Heinz Becker zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Sieghart Döhring and Jürgen Schläder (Munich: Ricordi, 1995), 199–​222.

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  339 essay is not widely known to English-​speaking readers, I will summarize its main points here. Pospíšil focuses on two techniques of destabilizing an established tonic to lead toward a new key. Both techniques rely on Vogler’s conception of the chromatic scale as a background construct (although Pospíšil does not mention Vogler). The first is a sudden upward shift by semitone, leading from a bare octave to another octave, a root-​position triad, or a root-​position dominant seventh chord. The dynamic is usually forte or fortissimo, the rhythm typically energetic. Pospíšil offers examples from Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots (1836) and Le prophète (1849); for Verdi, examples come from Rigoletto (1851) and Les vêpres siciliennes (1854). Example 10.3 juxtaposes two passages cited by Pospíšil. This technique of Meyerbeer’s approximates what Robert Bailey calls “expressive tonality” in the music of Wagner.17 Pospíšil’s second technique is related to his first in that a bare octave is followed by an ascent by semitone. This time, only the octave’s upper note ascends; its lower note descends one semitone, resulting in a vertical major ninth that is harmonized by a dominant 42 chord. Chromatic expansion often continues beyond this point, using contrary or oblique motion or some combination of the two. It is the 42 chord that creates surprise because, as Pospíšil notes, it suggests a key a tritone removed from the preceding octave. This is an instance of what Robert Gauldin has termed a chromatic wedge progression, of which Vogler’s omnibus is a subtype.18 Examples 10.4–​10.5 illustrate this technique; both are discussed by Pospíšil. Example 10.4a forms an orchestral transition between two numbers in Robert le diable. Such transitions are the norm in Meyerbeer’s grands opéras, where music is continuous for long stretches. Also characteristic is that the two numbers lie a semitone apart, B minor/​major (La valse infernale) and B♭ major (Alice’s couplets).19 Example 10.4b reduces the passage to a series of chords. Between the chords of B major and D major, voice leading is exclusively by semitone. The top and bottom voices represent an expanding chromatic wedge from an octave B to an octave D, moving by three and nine semitones respectively. The inner voices do not maintain a single direction, but each ends up three semitones higher than it began. Between the major triads that frame the progression, all sonorities are either of the dominant-​seventh type or minor triads in 64 inversion. Example 10.5, from Les vêpres siciliennes, is part of an orchestral transition between movements in the finale to act 2. The movements are in E major and F♯ minor respectively. Not only are these keys diatonically related, but the progression is more conventional than Meyerbeer’s: it is a slightly expanded version of what

17 Robert Bailey, “The Structure of the Ring and Its Evolution,” 19th-​Century Music 1 (1977): 48–​61. See c­ hapter 12 for a discussion of expressive tonality. 18 Robert Gauldin, “The Theory and Practice of Chromatic Wedge Progressions in Romantic Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 26 (2004): 1–​22. The voices of Vogler’s chromatic omnibus move toward rather than away from each other. 19 This specific opposition of keys recalls that in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 106. The expressive opposition intended by Meyerbeer also seems to echo Beethoven’s.

Example 10.3.  Meyerbeer and Verdi compared

Example 10.3.  Continued

a. Meyerbeer, Les Huguenots, act 2, Duo Marguerite–​Raoul, cabaletta b. Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes, act 4, Duo Hélène–​Henri, mm. 96–​110

342  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.4.  Meyerbeer, Robert le diable, act 3

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  343 Example 10.4.  Continued

344  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.4.  Continued

a. La valse infernale, mm. 184–​204 b. Harmonic scheme of ­example 10.4a Example 10.5.  Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes, act 2, Final, mm. 763–​82 (voices omitted)

Paula Telesco calls the “short omnibus,” the bass line of which includes the Le–​ Sol–​Fi–​Sol schema, here in F♯ minor (D–​C♯–​B♯–​C♯).20 When later nineteenth-​ century critics complained of the overuse of the diminished-​seventh chord by composers earlier in the century, Meyerbeer surely stood among the accused. Example 10.6, from Robert le diable, shows an entire page of vocal score that contains nothing but diminished-​seventh chords. 20 Paula Telesco, “Enharmonicism and the Omnibus Progression in Classical-​Era Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 20 (1998): 242–​79. On the Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol schema, see ­chapter 6.

Example 10.6.  Robert le diable, act 4, Final, excerpt

346  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera The diminished-​seventh chord divides the octave into minor thirds. Meyerbeer was clearly fascinated by equal-​interval transposition—​interval cycles, to use George Perle’s term.21 His interest in interval cycles can plausibly be traced to his teacher Vogler. Meyerbeer certainly studied the “Wolf ’s Glen” scene from Weber’s Der Freischütz, in which keys are deployed according to a minor-​third cycle beginning and ending with F♯.22 Rossini’s fondness for major-​third cycles would also have been known to Meyerbeer by the time he wrote Robert le diable. More overtly than Rossini, Meyerbeer associates cycles of major seconds (Perle’s C2), minor thirds (C3), major thirds (C4), and tritones (C6) with extreme emotional states—​ the bizarre, the uncanny, the evil, or the ecstatic.23 Straightforward chromatic ascent (C1) is associated with increasing dramatic tension. The best-​known interval cycle in Meyerbeer’s music accompanies the exorcism performed by the false prophet Jean of Leyden upon his mother Fidès, whom he claims not to recognize, during the fourth-​act finale of Le prophète (example 10.7). The passage begins with a direct juxtaposition (not shown) of F♯ minor and C major, two keys separated by tritone. The exorcism motive follows. It involves a two-​chord model, C–​F♯, which is followed by two sequential transpositions by whole tone: first D–​A♭, then E–​B♭. The initial two-​semitone interval in the vocal line, C–​A♯, is transposed upward by whole tone not twice but three times: C–​A♯, D–​C, E–​D, F♯–​E, leading to a cadence on D. Except for the initial vocal upbeat and the sixteenth note C♯, the vocal line adheres to the “even” whole-​tone scale—​C20 in Perle’s notation—​sounding every note of that scale except G♯/​A♭. The passage is so thoroughly governed by interval cycles that the D-​major cadence seems like an imposition. Its logic is revealed in retrospect: D major is treated as the dominant of G, the finale’s harmonic goal.24 An early version of Robert le diable, composed in 1829–​1830, includes a still more single-​minded use of sequential ascent by whole tones, again in the finale to act 4. This version of the opera appears in a supplement to the critical edition; it has never been performed.25 Example 10.8 shows the passage in question. As in example 10.7, a progression of two major triads a tritone apart is repeated sequentially, starting on each note of an ascending whole-​tone scale. This time the “odd” rather than the “even” scale is used. Unlike the Prophète example, Meyerbeer completes the octave ascent before switching from chromatic to diatonic pitch space: the sequence’s last note, G, is treated as a dominant pedal in C major/​minor.

21 Perle’s notation for interval cycles was introduced in ­chapter 8. 22 Weber’s minor-​third cycle was first discussed, so far as I am aware, by Robert Bailey, in Daniel Heartz and Bonnie Wade, eds., “Visual and Musical Symbolism in German Romantic Opera,” in International Musicological Society: Report of the Twelfth Congress, Berkeley, 1977 (Kassel, 1981), 436–​43. 23 Compare Richard Cohn, “Uncanny Resemblances: Tonal Signification in the Freudian Age,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 57 (2004): 285–​324. 24 When the same passage is repeated later in the scene, the B♭ major chord in example 10.5 is followed not by a cadence but by a diminished-​seventh chord on C♯ that resolves to a G-​major 64 chord, initiating the G-​major stretta with which the act ends. 25 Vol. IV (Supplement), 565–​67.

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  347 Example 10.7.  Le prophète, act 4, Final: The exorcism

348  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.7.  Continued

Both the sequence and its context are strongly reminiscent of Vogler’s Die Scala (example 10.2). The bizarre progression is reserved for the opera’s peripeteia: the moment when Robert, overcome with remorse, breaks the magic branch that Bertram, his Mephistophelian father, induced him to acquire in act 3. In Le prophète, Jean’s dream narration calls forth more uncanny harmony. Example 10.9 shows another sequence in ascending whole tones, but the passage as a whole constitutes a modulation by tritone, from E♭ major via F♯ major to A major. The sequence begins after the change of key signature. Its chords are diminished sevenths, built respectively on G♯, A♯, and B♯. Bass and vocal line move in parallel minor tenths, following complementary whole-​tone scales—​odd in the melody, even in the bass. As in example 10.7, the vocal sequence extends beyond the orchestral one; it begins on A4 and ascends in whole steps as far as E♯5. After a few measures, the bass catches up to the voice, reaching D3 beneath F5. The ascent ends with a motion by semitone, reaching the same diminished-​seventh chord, C30, that ended the E♭-​major passage. The beamed ascent in the vocal line constitutes a melodic minor scale in F♯ minor, preparing the turn to F♯ major that follows, but the final cadence is in A major. The passage as a whole is structured at the deepest level by C6 (the modulation by tritone) and at a middleground level by C3 (E♭–​F♯–​A); part of the foreground is governed by C2 (the whole-​tone sequence). Diatonic elements include the cadential bass line, 3̂–4̂–5̂–1̂ in A major. Considering their importance to Vogler and younger composers such as Liszt, minor-​third cycles appear less often in Meyerbeer’s music than one might expect.

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  349 Example 10.8.  Robert le diable, version of 1829–​1830: Act 4, Final, excerpt

One example appears in the first-​act finale of Robert le diable, where Robert, spurred on by Bertram, loses all he owns at a game of dice. His last possessions are lost to the music of example 10.10 (the orchestra’s measured trills represent the rolling of the dice). The progression I–​V is sounded respectively in the keys of D♭, E, G, and B♭ major;26 F, the dominant of B♭, is then retained as a pedal. A different 26 Because D♭ has just been tonicized, it is easier to hear the two-​chord progressions as I–​V than as IV–​I, especially at first.

350  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.9.  Le prophète, act 2, Récit du songe: Reduction of mm. 42–​71

sequence, this one essentially diatonic, next leads from F to V of D minor, the key in which the finale’s stretta will begin. Major-​third cycles are used by Meyerbeer to great dramatic effect. Two of the most memorable occur in act 4 of Les Huguenots. Richard Taruskin has identified one of these, the moment when the Catholics’ weapons are blessed by three monks in preparation for the massacre of Protestants on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572. In an A♭-​major context, alternating triads of E major and A♭ major are answered by a C-​major triad sung by unaccompanied men’s voices.27 We will return to this passage later. The other major-​third cycle occurs in the slow movement of the love duet between Raoul, an unmarried Protestant, and Valentine, a married Catholic. This movement, labeled Cavatine in the score, is in G♭ major and ternary form. Its main section (example 10.11) assumes the lyric form AABA. The orchestral bass consists entirely of pedal points. Phrase 1 sounds over a tonic pedal in G♭. Phrase 2 moves to B♭ major, the major mediant, via a transient A♮. Phrase 3, the contrasting middle, stands on B♭, which now sounds like e♭:V. But the music does not arrive at E♭ in either mode: phrase 4 returns to G♭ major. The most inspired move initiates the ternary form’s B section: the harmony moves suddenly from G♭ major to a D major triad with A♮ in the bass. (Compare the bass’s move from G♭ to A♮ in phrase 1 of the lyric form.) D major is heard as G♭:♭VI and thus as “really” E♭♭ major. As in phrase 3 of the lyric form, a major 64 chord alternates with an apparent root-​position dominant. This time the 64 is the more stable chord—​partly because the dominant chord includes a seventh, but also because D, the root of the 64, acts as a point of melodic departure in the voice 27 Richard Taruskin, Music in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 224.

Example 10.10.  Robert le diable, act 1, Final, mm. 186–​211 (Scène du jeu)

Example 10.10.  Continued

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  353 Example 10.11.  Les Huguenots, act 4, Grand duo, Cavatine

354  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.11.  Continued

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  355 Example 10.11.  Continued

356  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.11.  Continued

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  357 Example 10.11.  Continued

and melodic return in the cellos. The last D is harmonized by B♭ major, ♭VI in relation to D major. Although D never appears in the bass, a harmonic sequence is formed, composed of repeated motions from a local tonic to its ♭VI: first G♭–​E♭♭ (spelled G♭–​D); then E♭♭–​C♭♭ (spelled D–​B♭). The move from B♭ to G♭, which would complete the major-​third cycle, was heard between phrases 3 and 4 of the lyric form.28 After the passage shown in example 10.11 the music returns again, in a roundabout way, from B♭ major to G♭ major. As it invokes the major-​third cycle G♭–​D–​B♭–​G♭—​C42 in Perle’s notation—​the example also illustrates another Meyerbeerian usage that Verdi would adopt: the sudden leap to a harmonically remote 64 chord, treated as a consonance. Such 64 chords in Verdi have been the focus of at least two studies,29 but the link to Meyerbeer has not been widely noted. In addition to 64 chords, Meyerbeer uses dominant 42 chords in unconventional ways; so too, again, will Verdi. The expanding chromatic wedges described by Pospíšil employ 42 chords in highly emphasized positions, often as chords of surprise. While these chords might not resolve as dominants, their bass notes almost always descend by step as expected. Such is not the case in example 10.12, from the Valse villageoise in act 2 of Le prophète. Here a series of chromatically ascending 42 chords occurs over the bass notes E♭–​E♮–​F. Although the number as a whole is in E major, the key of this excerpt is A minor, modulating to C major. Each 42 chord receives a tentative resolution in the following measure, but the first two “resolutions” return to the 42 chord, acting as embellishing lower-​neighbor chords before the 42 ascends to another 42 a semitone higher. The one-​pitch interjections by un paysan (a peasant) confirm that the bass note of the 42 is the effective bass of the entire four-​measure unit. Only the last 42 chord, on F, is 28 This major-​third descent represents III♯–​I rather than I–​♭VI. 29 Massimo Bruni, “Funzionalità drammatica dell’accordo di quarta e sesta nello stile di Verdi,” in Atti del Io Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1969), 36–​39; Giorgio Sanguinetti and Deborah Burton, “Verdi’s Six-​Fours and the parola scenica,” Music Theory & Analysis 4 (2017): 61–​90.

358  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.12.  Le prophète, act 2, Valse villageoise, mm. 119–​32

permitted genuine resolution, preparing the C-​ major cadence that ends the passage. For Meyerbeer, the tritone retains its traditional association with evil and the uncanny. Tritone juxtapositions abound in his operas—​as keys, triads, and melodic leaps. Perhaps the best-​known example is the fortissimo C♮ blared by the brass immediately after the conclusion of the G♭-​major Cavatine in Les Huguenots, act 4. Of the six possible tritones, Meyerbeer favors C–​F♯. A distinctly Meyerbeerian sound is an upward vocal leap, at a climactic moment, from C to F♯. Example 10.13 shows three such leaps, two in Robert le diable and one in Les Huguenots. (Example 10.13b immediately follows the passage shown in example 10.6.) All occur in the finale to act 4, which generally marks the climax of Meyerbeer’s grands opéras. C30, the diminished-​ seventh chord of which C–​ F♯ forms a part, runs throughout acts 4–​5 of Les Huguenots, much as it runs through Der Freischütz as Samiel’s leitmotif. Meyerbeer uses the chord in all of its typical early nineteenth-​ century functions: as viio7, ♯ivo7 (viio7/​V), and as common-​tone embellishment to both I and V7. Act 5 concentrates on two tritone-​related keys, A minor for the Catholic murderers and E♭ major for their Protestant victims; A–​E♭ is the other tritone contained in C30. In act 5, C30 has two main functions: as ♯ivo7 in both keys

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  359

Example 10.13.  Upward leaps from C to F♯

a. Robert le diable, act 4, Final, mm. 259–​63 (Robert’s line omitted) b. The same, mm. 151–​60 c. Les Huguenots, act 4, Grand duo: Transition to the Cavatine and as a common-​tone embellishment of the tonic in A minor. In the murderers’ chorus, C30 alternates with A minor to form the main theme (example 10.14).30 In Robert le diable, Meyerbeer’s assignment of B minor to the demonic world makes almost inevitable a corresponding emphasis on the key of F.31 F major is the 30 Berlioz comments on the violence of this theme and the contribution to its effect of the raised sixth degree: “L’auteur a su la leur donner par un moyen fort simple, mais qu’il fallait trouver, et, de plus, qu’il fallait oser employer: c’est l’altération de la sixième note du mode mineur. La phrase brutale dans laquelle cette note est jetée est en la mineur, et le fa (sixième note), qui devrait être naturel, est constamment dièzé.” Journal des débats, 10 December 1836. 31 That Beethoven called B minor a “black” key (schwarze Tonart) is well known. Spohr used B minor as a demonic key in his Faust (1816) and Pietro di Abano (1827), two operas that Meyerbeer knew well. Weber did likewise in Der Freischütz (1821) and Euryanthe (1823), as did Wagner in Der fliegende Holländer (1840).

360  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.14.  Les Huguenots, act 5, Chœur des meurtriers

main key of acts 1 and 5, and it opens act 3 in the form of an entr’acte. The key serves other purposes elsewhere in the opera, especially as the memorable refrain of Isabelle’s cavatine “Robert, toi que j’aime” in act 4 (this leads to Robert’s breaking of the magic branch). B minor occupies a crucial position as the key of Bertram’s two solo pieces in act 3, La valse infernale and Évocation. The Évocation, in which Bertram calls forth the spirits of nuns who had broken their vows, forms the first movement of the act’s finale.32 A more direct juxtaposition of B and F occurs in the act 5 finale, where the clock runs out on Bertram and Robert is saved. The finale begins in B minor and ends in F major.33 Most of it remains in B, alternating the devil’s B minor with the parallel major. An allegro vivace adds fortissimo confirmations of B major until, suddenly, the clock strikes (on a diminished-​ seventh chord!) and Bertram disappears beneath the earth like his predecessor Don Giovanni and his successor Nick Shadow. An orchestral transition follows; example 10.15 reduces it to simple chords, with a chromatic scale in the soprano. The opera ends with a choral prayer in F major, sung to a melody heard earlier in the act. As the foregoing has suggested, extreme juxtapositions are a staple of Meyerbeer’s musical dramaturgy. A subtler contrast is that between tonally centripetal and centrifugal numbers: Meyerbeer placed aesthetic value on tonal coherence for certain kinds of numbers but not others. Numbers with recurring refrains, in the French manner, tend to end where they began, a habit that the refrain principle encourages. So do many multi-​movement numbers written in the Italian manner, following la solita forma with occasional modifications.34 On the whole, Meyerbeer may be regarded as more conservative than Donizetti in the matter of tonal unity within a number. When Meyerbeer breaks the unity of key, as he does in the finales to acts 3–​5 of Robert, he does so for some dramatic 32 Meyerbeer had composed an entirely different finale for act 3, but the director of the Opéra, Louis Véron, insisted that there be a ballet. So Meyerbeer scrapped the existing finale (it is printed in the supplement to the critical edition). In its place he composed the ballet of lascivious, albeit dead, nuns, complete with a Kundry-​like seductress who works her charms on Robert. It was a succès de scandale at the premiere and for a long time afterward. 33 At one point, very near the premiere, Meyerbeer thought to omit the final chorus and end the opera in B major. See the commentary by Wolfgang Kühnhold and Peter Kaiser in the critical edition. 34 On Meyerbeer’s use of French vs. Italian forms see Steven Huebner, “Italianate Duets in Meyerbeer’s Grand Operas,” Journal of Musicological Research 8 (1989): 203–​58. Recent research on the history of Le prophète reveals that, in the course of cutting that score for practical reasons, Meyerbeer eliminated almost all of the “Italian” repetitions, causing many numbers to appear more “French.”

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  361 Example 10.15.  Robert le diable, act 5, Final: Transition to the final chorus (reduction)

purpose, a purpose that is often easier to discern in his case than in Donizetti’s. In Meyerbeer’s grands opéras as in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, finales are the numbers most likely to begin and end in different keys. In addition to acts 3–​5 of Robert, the gigantic finale to act 4 of Le prophète belongs to this category. The scene depicts Jean’s coronation as King-​Prophet and his confrontation with Fidès. It ends firmly in G major. In the score, the finale begins with a quiet prayer in G♭ major, but the preceding Coronation March opens the scene in E♭ major. (Compare two of this finale’s obvious descendants, Verdi’s finales to act 3 of Don Carlos and act 2 of Aida.35) If the finale is understood to begin with the march, during which Fidès enters silently, its motion from E♭ to G retraces that of the preceding duet between Berthe and Fidès. That duet is a four-​ movement structure in the Italian manner; although it is in G minor/​major, its introductory scène begins in E♭. The finale’s structure is more complex than the above account suggests: its first four movements are in E♭ major (march), G♭ major (men’s chorus), D major (children’s chorus), and A♭ minor/​major (couplets for Fidès). The juxtaposition of G♭ and D recapitulates the same juxtaposition in act 4 of Les Huguenots (example 10.11). Although some of Meyerbeer’s finales modulate extravagantly, his frequent adherence to tonal unity à la Rossini is equally striking. In Robert, the large-​scale introduction and finale to act 1 are solidly in F major. In both numbers, a movement in C (either mode) precedes the initial establishment of F. Movements in C also occur in the middle of each number. One of these movements is the strophic ballade in which the tale of Robert’s origins is recounted. The use of a ballade to tell an opera’s backstory is a remnant of opéra comique, the genre within which Robert le diable was initially conceived.36 Another Classical or Rossinian feature is Meyerbeer’s frequent interchange of parallel major and minor, as opposed to the mixture of relative keys that is characteristic of Bellini. In Rossini, a number that begins in a minor key may end in the parallel major. In Bellini, such a number is at least as likely to end in the relative major. As examples of Meyerbeer’s simultaneously innovative and conservative tendencies, I offer brief analyses of the two large numbers in Les Huguenots, act 4: the morceau d’ensemble entitled Conjuration et bénédiction des poignards 35 On Verdi’s admiration for the coronation scene in Le prophète see Andrew Porter, “Les Vêpres siciliennes: New Letters from Verdi to Scribe,” 19th-​Century Music 2 (1978): 95–​109; 96–​97. 36 Mark Everist, “The Name of the Rose: Meyerbeer’s opéra comique, Robert le Diable,” Revue de musicologie 80 (1994): 211–​50; 244.

362  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera (“conspiracy and blessing of the daggers”) and the love duet that serves in lieu of a finale. At the 1836 premiere, these numbers were preceded only by a brief recitative; I believe the act is most effective in this concise form. From the written evidence, however, Meyerbeer intended a romance for the heroine, Valentine, to follow the recitative.37 Why this romance was omitted from the premiere is unclear; it appeared in an appendix to the first edition, suggesting that its inclusion is optional. A still earlier version of the act, never performed, had an additional duet for Valentine and Raoul before the morceau d’ensemble.38 Tables 10.1–​10.2 diagram the two numbers, which together take more than half an hour in performance. Principal keys appear in boldface; metronome markings are Meyerbeer’s. Although there is a brief silence between the numbers, that silence is filled with action as Raoul, who has overheard the conspirators, emerges from his hiding place and seeks to escape so that he can warn his fellow Protestants of the impending massacre. Valentine stops him, and the duet begins. While the two numbers have contrasting structures—​a French reprise form followed by an Italianate duet—​they form a single dramatic unit. Because they flow into each other in dramatic time, one also perceives their music in relation to each other. Each number has a single main tonic, E for the morceau d’ensemble and F for the duet. In each case both modes of the tonic are used, but one mode is primary: E major and F minor, a SLIDE transformation in neo-​Riemannian terms. The E–​F progression might itself be regarded as an instance of Bailey’s expressive tonality, with the qualification that the duet reaches its tonic only with its second movement. The additional ascent by semitone to G♭ major for the duet’s slow movement, the Cavatine, seems a clearer instance of expressive tonality, but this statement must be qualified: the harmonic function of G♭ within the duet is that of a regular Neapolitan in F minor, although this function becomes clear only in retrospect. That each number in act 4 accelerates was understood in the nineteenth century, including by Jules Verne, who wrote that “the Andante turns into the Allegro, and the Allegro becomes the Vivace.”39 Matthias Brzoska has written a useful study of the way time is shaped in parts of La muette de Portici (Auber) and Les Huguenots.40 Using Meyerbeer’s metronome markings, Brzoska quantifies the acceleration, throughout act 5, of the chorale “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,” which is sung and played many times throughout the opera (though never in act 4) to represent the Protestants. Similarly, Berlioz characterized the Conjuration et 37 See Robert Letellier, ed., Giacomo Meyerbeer, Les Huguenots: The Manuscript Facsimile (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005), xvi. 38 The story is told in in Sieghart Döhring, “Die Autographen der vier Hauptopern Meyerbeers: Ein erster Quellenbericht,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 39 (1982): 46–​50. An abbreviated version in English appears in Letellier, ed., Les Huguenots: The Manuscript Facsimile, xvi–​xvii. The history of act 4 is also told in Huebner, “Italianate Duets.” 39 Jules Verne, Une fantaisie du docteur Ox (short story, 1872). The relevant passage is reproduced (in English) in Letellier, Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 88–​89. 40 Matthias Brzoska, “Historisches Bewußtsein und musikalische Zeitgestaltung,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 45 (1988): 50–​66.

Table 10.1. Meyerbeer, Les Huguenots, act 4, Conjuration et bénédiction des poignards First movement (St.-​Bris and chorus). e→E Allegro moderato, , e. ♩ =​138 Bar form (AAB), e→C

Transitional phrase on e:VA

Andantino, , E. ♩ =​88

Refrain. Lyric form (AABA) with repeated 2nd half, plus codetta

Allegro moderato. c♯→B→E:VA Andantino. E

Refrain. Abbreviated to a single period plus codetta

Recitative. E→c♯

Second movement (St.-​Bris). c♯ Allegro, , c♯. ♩ =​108

Three parallel strophes

Recitative, un peu moins vite. ♩ =​96 c♯→g♯ via chromatic sequence

Third movement (St.-​Bris). g♯

Allegro vivace, alla breve, g♯. ♩ =​152 Ends g♯:VA

Fourth movement (St.-​Bris, three monks, and chorus). G♯ (spelled A♭) Poco andante, , G♯→g♯. ♩ =​80.

Two complete statements of a bar form; each has a coda based on C40

Statement no. 3 spins out into a modulating development, leading back to g♯

Fifth movement (Chorus). g♯→E

Allegro furioso, , g♯→E. ♩. =​132 Ends E:VA

Un peu moins vite, , E. ♩ =​108

Refrain. The tempo is faster than before; a coda follows.

364  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 10.2.  Les Huguenots, act 4, Grand duo Introduction. Allegro vivace, alla breve. Half note =​96 First movement (kinetic). A♭→f:VA

Allegro maestoso, , A♭→C; C becomes f:VA. ♩ =​80

Second movement (static). f

Allegro moderato, , f→F→f. ♩ =​84

Recitative. f→C

Third movement (kinetic, because the final cadence is disrupted). F Allegro brillante, . ♩ =​132

Brief recitative based on C30.

Fourth movement (Cavatine, static). G♭ Andante amoroso, . ♩ =​69

ABA form: outer sections in G♭, middle section D→B♭→G♭:VA. The reprise is abbreviated; a coda is added. Fifth movement (transition, kinetic). F:VA Maestoso, . ♩ =​69

The last six measures change to Allegro moderato, .

Sixth movement (Strette, static). f

Allegro con moto, , f. ♩. =​126

Raoul: Modified lyric form in f

Valentine: Un peu moins vite, ; a modulating sentence, F→C Ritornello:  returns over f:VA

Reprise of lyric form a due; original tempo, f

Coda: Fluctuating tempo, , f→F

bénédiction des poignards as a gigantic crescendo.41 Indeed, acts 4 and 5 each enact a long-​range intensification that is without parallel in earlier opera, despite the small forms that serve as Meyerbeer’s building blocks: two-​phrase periods, three-​ phrase bar forms,42 and four-​phrase lyric forms.43 41 Berlioz’s essay on Les Huguenots is translated in Ian Bent, ed., Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 2: Hermenuetic Approaches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39–​57. 42 On bar form, see ­chapter 5. 43 Hugh Macdonald points out Meyerbeer’s dependence on small-​scale symmetries of phrase and period structure in the operas before Le prophète; see “Robert le diable,” in Music in Paris in the

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  365 In the duet, movements I–​II unfold at similar tempi, a march-​like 80 followed by an 84 with accelerating accompaniment; note values and harmonic rhythm become gradually faster. In the following recitative, Valentine prevents Raoul from leaving by revealing that she, a married woman, loves him. His ecstatic response (movement III) is delivered at a rapid 132 to the quarter note, but the half-​note harmonic rhythm creates a slower pulse of 66. The triple-​meter Cavatine—​for Raoul, an escape into a dream state—​slows this pulse further to 60, with two and sometimes one harmony per measure. Slowest-​moving harmonically are the passages in the most distant keys, E♭♭ major (spelled D major) and C♭♭ major (spelled B♭ major). The transitional movement V, where the fatal signal is heard from a distance, starts at 69 to the quarter and accelerates through a brief Allegro moderato to movement VI, a cabaletta in  marked 126 to the dotted quarter. A stringendo leads to a coda in  time at quarter note =​152, with the bell sounding first at one-​measure, then at half-​measure intervals. Only when Valentine faints does the momentum falter, but by now the act is all but over. Raoul, knowing that the door is locked from the outside, leaps from the balcony and disappears into the night. Example 10.16 is a bass-​line graph of the morceau d’ensemble. As usual, rightward arrows indicate dominant-​to-​tonic progressions, leftward arrows the reverse. The principal tonics are represented by whole notes, local dominants (roots only) by eighth notes. Fleetingly tonicized triads are represented by half and quarter notes, depending on their strength. Stepwise motions in a single direction are slurred. A dotted tie indicates the prolongation of a harmony, which may be a local tonic or a local dominant. A Roman numeral stands at the beginning of each movement. I divide the number into five movements, as shown in table 10.1. The first movement alternates two tempi, an Allegro moderato and an Andantino refrain. The ensemble ends with a final, and faster, statement of the refrain; I include this in movement V. Example 10.17 offers a further reduction. Movement I is a closed structure in E, primarily E major, with an overall harmonic progression of i–​I–​vi–​II♯–​V–​I. Movement II is similarly closed in C♯ minor, viT in relation to E major. Taken together, movements III–​V prolong G♯, beginning and ending in the minor mode (iiiT) but with an extended excursion to the parallel major for movement IV (III♯T, spelled A♭ major in the score). Return to E major for the final refrain is made initially through a cycle of ascending minor thirds, g♯–​B–​D, with each triad preceded by its own dominant (see example 10.16). Continuation of the cycle would lead to F major, the key of the duet, a goal that Meyerbeer does not wish to reach yet. He short-​circuits the minor-​third cycle by treating F:V7 (m. 423) as the “German” augmented sixth of E, resolving to E:V (m. 424). The following dominant pedal, thirteen measures long, convincingly prepares the tonic refrain. Despite this lengthy dominant, one’s overall impression of the number’s tonal structure is

Eighteenth-​Thirties, ed. Peter Bloom (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1987), 466. The use of bar form in Les Huguenots is unmistakable; it may have been inspired by Meyerbeer’s use of “Ein feste Burg,” a chorale in bar form.

Example 10.16.  Les Huguenots, act 4: Bass-​line reduction of the morceau d’ensemble

Example 10.17.  A further reduction of ­example 10.15

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  367 that of a major tonic, E, surrounded by lower and upper mediants, two diatonic (viT and iiiT) and one chromatic (III♯T). The plan may not be one that Mozart would have used, but it is hardly radical. Most of the music in this ensemble is diatonic, a fact that makes chromatic passages stand out by contrast. There are three strongly chromatic passages in the ensemble. The first is the recitative that links movements II and III. This begins with the tritone leap C♯3–​ G♮2 in the bass and continues with dominant 42 chords resolved irregularly. The progression, outlined in example 10.16, includes an upper voice that ascends chromatically: starting from G♯, this voice proceeds A–​A♯–​B–​B♯–​C♯. The ascent is expressed in the orchestra, mostly by shrieks from flute and piccolo in a high register. The second chromatic passage is the one described by Taruskin and shown in example 10.18. This is the blessing of the daggers, the dramatic crux of the number; for it, the rhythmic momentum is stilled, replaced with solemn chords. The passage juxtaposes the two roots, E and G♯/​A♭, that appear most extensively in the number as tonics. Here, though, rather than A♭ major embellishing E major, as it does on the largest scale, E (or F♭) embellishes A♭ (or G♯) as its ♭VI; the semitone E♮–​E♭ appears in an inner voice. As Taruskin points out, the following C major triad is locally V/​vi, but it also completes the major-​third cycle E–​A♭–​C, or C40. The third chromatic passage, the transition to the final refrain, has already been described. The duet’s bass line receives a two-​stage reduction in ­examples 10.19–​10.20. The end of the morceau d’ensemble is included to show that the motion between the two numbers once again juxtaposes E major and A♭ major, a possible reference to example 10.18. The parlante texture of movement I, with the theme in the orchestra, resembles the tempo d’attacco of many duets by Donizetti and Verdi. Tonally as well as dramatically, this is a kinetic movement; it leaves A♭ major and does not return. Formally, the movement repeats a single theme in a series of three keys—​A♭, E♭, and C, all major—​of which the first and last statements are complete; the second ends with a half cadence in C, the key of the third statement. As example 10.19 shows by means of a dotted tie, I regard the augmented-​sixth chord on A♭ in the second statement as an altered return to the initial A♭; for this reason, the intervening E♭ (VT) is omitted from example 10.20. The III♯–​V–​I progression in A♭ that introduces the tempo d’attacco is transposed and enlarged, becoming III–​V–​i in F minor in the motion from movement I to movement II. Movement II is static where movement I was kinetic. Its lyric form, AABC, is also characteristic of static movements. But its end-​weighted release into the parallel major, with increasingly close alternation between the voices, makes it unusually dynamic for a movement of this type. Moreover, its opening tempo and rhythmic accompaniment suggest the tempo d’attacco of a Rossini or Bellini duet more readily than they do a slow movement. To make generic assignment still more uncertain, the movement ends like a cabaletta—​with a frantic coda, the orchestra eventually pounding away tutta forza.

The extensive recitative between movements II and III is a French feature. In the example, the numeral 8 indicates unison texture; a small o is shorthand for “diminished-​seventh chord.” The bass begins by ascending a ninth from F to G, but it pauses on D♭ along the way. The augmented fourth

368  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.18.  Les Huguenots, act 4: Blessing of the daggers

D♭–​G is filled with three ascending whole steps, connected by chromatic passing tones. The following C major is thus reached via the progression ♭II–​V–​I, a progression that will be reproduced on a larger scale between the G♭-​major Cavatine and the F-​minor Strette.

  Meyerbeer and the New Chromaticism  T  369 Example 10.19.  Les Huguenots, act 4: Bass-​line reduction of the Grand duo

Movement III, a brief solo for Raoul, consists of a single, closed unit in F major, organized like a Classical sentence. Its closing tonic is undercut by an abrupt diminished-​seventh chord; this is C30, with a bass note of E♭. The same chord occurred in the preceding recitative; see the asterisks at these points in example 10.19. The chords occur at two pivotal moments in the drama: Valentine’s avowal of love (cadence in C major) and the lovers’ contrasting reactions—​Valentine’s horrified, Raoul’s ecstatic—​to that avowal’s having been spoken aloud (cadence in G♭ major). In both cases C30 functions as a cadential pre-​dominant, ♯ivo7 in some inversion. The two tonics, C and G♭, are themselves contained in C30. Movements IV–​V have already been discussed. Movement V is transitional, consisting entirely of a dominant pedal in F minor. Movement VI, labeled Strette in the published score, follows the “dissimilar” pattern favored by Donizetti rather than the “similar” responses of Rossini and Bellini. After Raoul has sung the first statement of the cabaletta, closing with an emphatic PAC, Valentine replies not with a parallel second statement but with contrasting material—​initially slower (Un peu moins vite), more lyrical, and in the parallel major. Following a dominant pedal (which takes the place of a ritornello), the cabaletta’s final statement is sung, as usual, by both protagonists.

370  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 10.20.  A further reduction of ­example 10.19

The coda is notable for its inclusion of a chromatic omnibus (see example 10.19). This begins with a deceptive cadence to f:♯ivo7 (m. 367), followed by a seventeen-​ measure prolongation of the same diminished-​ seventh chord, C32 (mm. 367–​83; see the slurs in the example). The key of D minor is suggested by chromatic circling around that key’s dominant (mm. 375–​79), but a similar circling around F:V follows. C32 returns after a dominant pedal (Valentine has fainted), now with a bass note of B and with the F of the bell added. Little needs to be said about example 10.20, which begins with movement I, the tempo d’attacco. The large-​ scale harmonic progressions are remarkably conservative, especially once F minor is reached at the beginning of movement II. The significance of Meyerbeer’s grands opéras for Italian composers is manifold, and it extends beyond the disappearance of the two-​act serious opera or a tendency to favor historical subjects. A willingness to alter inherited forms for dramatic purposes becomes increasingly common, although precedent for this existed in Rossini’s Neapolitan operas. More frequent use of continuous musical textures, connecting one movement or number to the next, is another effect of grand opéra. Greater and more careful use of the orchestra is another. As this chapter has suggested, Meyerbeer’s harmonic practices were imitated by Italian composers, including Verdi. So was his love of violent juxtapositions, both harmonic and dramatic. Slower to change was the French and Italian preference for phrases carrées (“square phrases”), denoting symmetry of phrase rhythm. Meyerbeer’s Italian experience inclined him even more strongly to la carrure des phrases than if he had been a native French speaker, since Italian verse features fewer rhythmic irregularities than French verse. In the long run, as Andreas Giger has shown, the solution to the impasse of phrases carrées also lay in France: by letting French verse be French rather than an imitation of Italian, Verdi and French contemporaries such as Gounod would win their way to a freer declamation and thus a freer melodic style.44 But, around 1840, these developments lay a little in the future.

44 Giger, Verdi and the French Aesthetic.

C HA P T E R

Eleven

Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti

They came from opposite ends of Italy, but the careers of Saverio Mercadante and Gaetano Donizetti exhibit many parallels. Both were trained by teachers who admired Haydn and Mozart along with the Italian masters. Mercadante studied with Niccolò Zingarelli in Naples, Donizetti with Simon Mayr in Bergamo. Both wrote a good deal of instrumental music, including string quartets and concertos for wind instruments. Both composed as many as four operas per year. Perhaps for that reason, neither found his mature style quickly. Donizetti’s breakthrough came in 1830 with Anna Bolena, but the operas composed a few years later, including Lucrezia Borgia and Maria Stuarda, are more original. Mercadante enjoyed popular success as early as 1821, but he is remembered chiefly for a series of operas composed between 1837 and 1840; these are known as “reform” operas for their relatively free treatment of the Italian conventions. The first and most successful of the “reform” operas was Il giuramento, composed for Milan to a libretto by Gaetano Rossi. 1837, the year of Il giuramento, was also the year of Zingarelli’s death. Mercadante and Donizetti, the latter a resident of Naples since 1822, vied for Zingarelli’s position as director of the Conservatory. That Mercadante got the job probably owed something to local pride: the leadership of the Neapolitan school remained in Neapolitan hands.1 He assumed the position in 1840 and retained it until his death thirty years later. The styles of Mercadante and Donizetti underwent important changes after 1835; for both, experiences in Paris were decisive. Bellini, whose influence on both composers is obvious, had died soon after the 1835 premiere of I puritani at the Théâtre-​Italien. Donizetti was in Paris at the time, completing Marino Faliero for the same theater. After returning to Italy for Lucia di Lammermoor (Naples) and Belisario (Venice), he composed L’assedio di Calais (1836) with unprecedented care and with the Opéra in mind; it was never performed there, premiering instead in Naples. Mercadante’s first invitation to compose for the Théâtre-​Italien came in 1836 and resulted in I briganti, which had the misfortunate of appearing shortly after Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots; it passed almost unnoticed. As with Donizetti, there was no immediate Parisian sequel. As with Donizetti, too, it was Mercadante’s next opera that more fully assimilated the French experience. This was Il giuramento.2 Mercadante was born in Altamura in present-​day Puglia. From 1816 onward, this was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, of which Naples was the capital. Donizetti’s birthplace of Bergamo lay within the Austrian Empire. 2 See the account in Philip Gossett, “Music at the Théâtre-​Italien,” in Music in Paris in the Eighteen-​ Thirties, ed. Peter Bloom, 327–​64. Mercadante followed up the success of Il giuramento with a 1

The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0012

372  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Greater harmonic complexity is only one of the dramatic and musical refinements evident in both composers’ operas after 1835, but it is the one on which we will focus. Mercadante’s speed of composition had slowed since 1830, but he was always known for taking unusual care with his accompaniments. As I will show, the harmonic language of his “reform” operas exhibits a degree of chromaticism that suggests recent study of Meyerbeer’s scores. Another change affected Mercadante more than Donizetti: a nearly Germanic attitude toward the work-​status of an opera. In an 1838 letter to Francesco Florimo, Mercadante wrote: “But the most important thing is . . . not to allow my score to be altered in the slightest, whether by additions or cuts or transpositions. The singers should study it carefully and neglect nothing in the ensembles, putting their whole heart into declaiming and accentuating it, without any arbitrariness of tempo or in the addition of fioritura.”3 Verdi would express similar ideas a decade later. We begin with a look at Mercadante’s “reform” operas, especially Il giuramento. We will then examine the final act of Donizetti’s La favorite (1840), a grand opéra in French. The chapter concludes with a brief look at Donizetti’s Maria di Rohan (1843), an Italian opera composed for Vienna.

Mercadante’s Operas, 1837–​1840 There is no critical edition of Mercadante’s works. My analysis of Il giuramento is based on two sources: the 1871 Ricordi vocal score (no. 42049) and an undated manuscript of the full score from the Naples Conservatory library; the latter was probably copied for the opera’s 1838 performance at the Teatro San Carlo. The two sources agree in most respects, although, as usual, the opera’s division into numbers is not among them. I have also consulted Ernesto Pulignano’s description of the autograph and its relation to the vocal score in his monograph on Il giuramento.4 For Il bravo and La vestale, I rely similarly on copyists’ manuscripts and vocal scores. The Ricordi vocal scores of all Mercadante operas discussed in this chapter were reprinted by Garland Press in the series Italian Opera, 1810–​ 1840, edited by Philip Gossett.5 Il giuramento (“The Oath”) is set in fourteenth-​century Syracuse, an ancient city in Sicily. Its story is close to that of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, both being based on Victor Hugo’s play Angelo, tyran de Padoue (1835). The plot is tangled. Bianca is married to Count Manfredo, but she secretly loves the knight Viscardo, whom she has not seen for years. Manfredo doubts Bianca’s fidelity, and he has a secret substantially revised version of I briganti, also for La Scala; see Michael Wittmann, “Meyerbeer and Mercadante? The Reception of Meyerbeer in Italy,” Cambridge Opera Journal 5 (1993): 115–​32. 3 Letter of January 1838, quoted in David Kimbell, Italian Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 477–​78. 4 Ernesto Pulignano, “Il giuramento” di Rossi e Mercadante (Turin: EDT, 2007). 5 The volumes in this series were published between 1985 and 1991.

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  373 love of his own, the lady Elaisa. Viscardo, newly arrived in Syracuse with Elaisa, is supposed to love her, but he secretly loves Bianca. Although Elaisa loves Viscardo, she is loyal to her friend Bianca, who saved her father’s life ten years earlier. Manfredo decides to poison Bianca, but Elaisa manages to substitute a narcotic: her intent is to have Bianca simulate death, like Shakespeare’s Juliet, so that Viscardo and Bianca may escape together. The plan goes predictably awry when Viscardo comes upon Bianca’s seemingly lifeless body. In a fury, he stabs Elaisa. Bianca awakens and reveals the truth, while Elaisa dies in Viscardo’s arms. The opera contains eight numbers in both the autograph and the copyist’s manuscript; in both sources, act 3 comprises a single number, like act 3 of Rossini’s Otello. It is not always clear in the manuscripts where numbers begin and end. For example, the recitative that follows the introduzione appears from Pulignano’s description to be no. 2 in the autograph score, although such recitatives were not traditionally numbered. The autograph’s no. 3 is headed Coro che precede la Cavatina di Bianca (“chorus that precedes Bianca’s cavatina”), but the cavatina itself is not separately numbered, and its beginning is not marked with a new heading. In the copyist’s manuscript, the number following the introduzione is headed Scena e Cavatina Bianca Dopo l’introduzione atto 1o. Table 11.1 is a hybrid: it follows the copyist’s divisions of act 1 (denying the status of “no. 2” to the Recitativo dopo l’Introduzione) but the autograph’s divisions of act 2 (as described by Pulignano). In act 2, the main question concerns the status of the opening chorus. Both autograph and vocal score indicate that this chorus belongs with Viscardo’s aria as a single number. The copyist’s score gives the chorus a separate number. As a result of these decisions, table 11.1 shows Il giuramento as containing seven numbers rather than eight. My departure from the autograph is slight, amounting merely to the demotion of the Recitativo dopo l’Introduzione and the simplification of some titles for individual numbers.

Table 11.1. Mercadante, Il giuramento, outline Act 1 No. 1. Introduzione No. 2. Scena e Cavatina di Bianca No. 3. Recitativo e Finale Io Act 2 No. 4. Coro d’Introduzione ed Aria di Viscardo No. 5. Scena ed Aria di Manfredo No. 6. Finale 2o (Scena, Duetto e Terzetto) Act 3 No. 7. Finale 3o

374  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Some indication of the freedom of modulation in Il giuramento may be gleaned from the two arias in act 2 (nos. 4 and 5 in the opera). Each combines Bellini’s tendency to move between relative keys with an un-​Bellinian tendency to modulate by semitone. In Viscardo’s aria, the introductory chorus begins in B minor but quickly moves to D major, where it remains. The aria’s slow movement is in a stable D♭ major. The brief tempo di mezzo starts on a unison A (D♭:♭6̂) and remains in A minor, ending on its dominant. The cabaletta resembles the opening chorus in that it begins in a minor key (A minor) before moving to and ending in the relative major (C major). Despite the relative-​key mutability in two of its movements, the number’s main tonics trace a three-​note chromatic descent: D–​D♭–​C, all major. The scena of Manfredo’s aria begins with a lengthy prelude in F major, and the scena itself is primarily in F. The following slow movement is in G major; this G is prepared, in Bellinian fashion, by a B major chord—​V of the relative minor—​at the end of the scena. Within the slow movement, too, return to G major is prepared by V of vi. Again the tempo di mezzo is brief, beginning with a unison B♭ (G:♭3̂) and working its way through two descending fifths to A♭ major, the key of the cabaletta. In the largest sense, the number ascends F–​G–​A♭. The three major keys have few notes in common; the linking harmonies, B major and B♭ major, are chromatic in all of the keys they link. Beginning and ending a number in different keys was common enough by the mid-​1830s, but beginning and end were typically related by a consonant interval, either fifth or third. In Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), a conservative opera by Donizetti’s standards, Lucia’s cavatina progresses in the autograph from the key of E♭—​first minor, then major—​to A♭ major. (The published version is a semitone lower, but internal relationships are unchanged.) The following duet between Lucia and Edgardo moves from G—​first minor, then major—​to B♭ major. Similar key relations dominate individual numbers in Bellini’s Norma and Beatrice di Tenda. The act 2 finale in Il giuramento resembles the act 1 finale in Norma: a duet for two women, here Bianca and Elaisa, becomes a trio upon the entrance of a male character. Unlike Bellini’s finale, which runs through la solita forma twice, a single solita forma serves Mercadante for both duet and trio; Manfredo enters during the tempo di mezzo. The finale’s overall motion is from E major to E♭ major, although the tempo d’attacco—​the first movement after the scena—​is in D♭ major, changing to C♯ minor (E major’s relative) toward the end. Unusually, the slow movement resumes E major, the key of the number’s opening, rather than being set in a distant key. Because tonal unity is not a concern for Mercadante, the most dramatic modulation occurs not before but after the slow movement. Example 11.1 shows the initial move to E♭ major in the tempo di mezzo. Once E major has been turned into a dominant seventh, a cycle of ascending minor thirds moves sequentially, first from A minor to C major, then from C minor to E♭ major. The pattern closely resembles that of mm. 1–​16 in the marcia funebre from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 26, a work that Mercadante may have known (he spent part of the 1824–​1825 season in Vienna). Beethoven returns to his starting key after modulating by tritone; Mercadante does not.

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  375 Example 11.1.  Mercandate, Il giuramento, act 2, Finale: Beginning of the tempo di mezzo

A progression near the end of the act 1 finale is shown, in reduced form, in example 11.2. The key is C major. After a diatonic sequence straight out of a Neapolitan partimento,6 III♯ of C major—​E major, arrived at through a Phrygian 6 Fenaroli, Regole musicali per i principianti di cembalo (Naples, 1775), 24. The Regole (“Rules”) are reproduced and translated on Robert Gjerdingen’s website Monuments of Partimenti (http://​facu​lty-​ web.at.north​west​ern.edu/​music/​gje​rdin​gen/​par​time​nti/​index.htm). The sequence in question may be found in paragraph II under the heading “Stepwise Ascent.”

376  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 11.2.  Il giuramento, act 1, Finale, stretta: A chromatic wedge in the double coda (original in ; note values not reduced)

cadence—​initiates a chromatic wedge that expands outward from the octave E3–​ E5, moves eight semitones in each direction, and reaches the compound major third A♭2–​C6. All vertical intervals within the wedge comprise an even number of semitones, and most are harmonized with chords of the dominant-​seventh type, if one allows for enharmonic respelling. Not surprisingly, Mercadante treats the last chord, a dominant seventh on A♭, as a “German” augmented sixth and resolves it into a C-​major cadence. Since the passage is part of a double coda, the entire progression is heard twice. As in Vogler’s Die Scala, discussed in ­chapter 10, the juxtaposition of diatonic and chromatic scale fragments—​each harmonized in textbook fashion—​is this example’s outstanding feature. In Mercadante’s reform operas, modulatory sequences by successive whole tones occur with some frequency in passages of dramatic tension. These sequences may ascend or descend, but they tend to be based, as in Vogler, on chromatic scale fragments, which usually appear in the vocal line. Example 11.3 shows two instances, one each from Il bravo (1839) and La vestale (1840). The excerpt from act 1 of Il bravo (11.3a) opens the tempo di mezzo of a duet for two tenors. Pisani, an exiled nobleman, asks to borrow the Bravo’s dagger and disguise; the music sounds appropriately conspiratorial. A chromatic ascent in the vocal line, from D♭4 to G4, motivates successive tonicizations of D♭, E♭, F, and G, all major; vocal notes between these points are local leading tones. Following the arrival on G4, the line falls an octave to G3 (not shown) to begin a second stepwise ascent, this one mostly diatonic. The passage from La vestale (11.3b) is taken from the scena of the Emilia–​ Decio duet in act 2. It is sung by the Gran Vestale, the head of the order of Vestal virgins, who reminds the heroine of the dreadful consequences should the sacred flame go out (which of course it will). This passage, too, is organized around a chromatic vocal line, this one descending. The melody creates a series of ♭6̂–5̂ resolutions in F, E♭, and D♭/​C♯, in that order. The orchestral bass shadows the melody a minor tenth below. Although the chromatic sequence ends with the

Example 11.3.  Mercadante: Whole-​tone sequences

a. Il bravo, act 1, Duetto Pisani–​Bravo b. La vestale, act 2, Duetto Emilia–​Decio

378  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

arrival on C♯ major with a bass note of E♯, the bass continues to descend chromatically for the next few chords: E♮–​D♯–​D♮, arriving on C♮ (instead of C♯) at the fortissimo. The chords on D♯ and C♮ are the first inversions of B major and A minor respectively, continuing the whole-​tone descent of harmonic roots: F major, E♭ major, D♭ major, B major, A minor. These roots belong to the “odd” whole-​tone scale, C21, which is nearly complete, as is the chromatic scale in the bass. As was noted in ­ chapter 10, Meyerbeer was adventurous in his use of harmonically remote 64 chords, which he often approaches by leap in the bass. Mercadante goes beyond Meyerbeer in this respect, coming surprisingly near to Verdi’s practice.7 Because such 64 chords are rare in Bellini or Donizetti, one may conclude that Mercadante was Verdi’s principal model in this area. Examples 11.4–​ 11.7 illustrate.

Example 11.4 (Il giuramento, Act 2) This E-​major orchestral prelude, notated without a key signature, opens the finale, the broad outlines of which were discussed above. Three times a phrase begins with E:I–​V. The third chord in the progression is IV the first time (m. 2), III♯ the second (m. 5), and ♯ivo7 the third (m. 8). Each time, at precisely this point, the melody begins an octave descent in which the initial high note—​respectively E, G♯, and G♮—​is treated as a local tonic, ending with an arpeggiation of that triad. The third time (mm. 8–​10), E:♯ivo7 leads not to E:V but to G:I64; only then does E:V follow, in 63 inversion. In the larger context, G:I acts as E:♭III, despite the 64 inversion.

Example 11.5 (Il giuramento, Act 3) Here two cadential 64 chords, resolving to their respective dominant sevenths, are juxtaposed. The first, in F major (m. 7), is only a mild surprise after a diminished-​ seventh chord that seemed to promise C minor; instead that chord acts as F: ♯ivo7. The second 64, in D♭ major (m. 10), comes as a shock as Elaisa registers the threatening entry of Viscardo. Although this 64 resolves conventionally two measures later, it initially has the effect of a deceptive cadence in F minor, V–​VI, despite the 64 inversion. Inverted deceptive cadences are a recurring feature of Mercadante’s reform operas; usually it is VI that appears in inversion, either 63 or 64.

Example 11.6 (Il bravo, Act 1) The opera, set in sixteenth-​century Venice, is based on a French play written partly by Alexandre Dumas père, which is based in turn on James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Bravo (1831). The introduzione opens with a chorus of bravi—​assassins See the studies cited in ­chapter 10, note 28. 7

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  379 Example 11.4.  Il giuramento, act 2, Finale, mm. 1–​18

for hire. The key is E♭ major, the tempo andante. A modulation leads to A major, a tritone away, the bass descending in minor thirds from E♭:V, through C:V, to A:V. In the following allegro (A major), a fortissimo 64 chord of C major erupts repeatedly. The first time (11.6a), the 64 resolves to a C-​major cadence. On subsequent appearances, the C-​ major 64 comes directly from the A-​ major tonic, and it progresses to a V–​I cadence in A (11.6b). Like the 64 chord in example 11.4, this 64 acts as ♭III in second inversion. The minor third G♮–​E in the orchestral bass is doubled in parallel octaves by the highest choral voice.

Example 11.5.  Il giuramento, act 3: An excerpt from the scena of the final duet

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  381

Example 11.6.  Il bravo, act 1, Introduzione: Loud 64 chords

a. Cadence in C major b. Cadence in A major

Example 11.7 (La vestale, Act 1) This is another instance in which the progression from a 64 chord is highlighted through outer-​voice octaves, this time in contrary motion. In the scena of the Emilia–​Giunia duet, a cadence to B♭ major is prepared in a pianissimo dynamic, but the 64 in the third measure arrives forte. Rather than complete the cadence, Mercadante changes the mode of the 64 to minor and proceeds directly to A♭ major, with F–​A♭ in both vocal line and bass. A♭ then acts as V of the D♭-​major primo tempo. The B♭-​minor 64 acts as D♭:vi. Mercadante could achieve harmonic magic using nothing but root-​position triads. Example 11.8 shows a phrase that links two statements of the main theme

Example 11.7.  La vestale, act 1, Duetto Emilia–​Giunia: An excerpt from the scena

Example 11.8.  La vestale, act 1, Finale: An excerpt from the concertato (vocal parts omitted)

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  383 in the concertato of La vestale’s first-​act finale. The preceding section ended with a PAC in F major, the dominant of the movement’s main key, B♭ major. The melodic line moves sequentially, C–​E♭–​B♭–​D♭. The harmonization is not sequential: the four-​chord progression, c–​A♭–​G♭–​D♭, could be heard as A♭:iii–​I followed by D♭:IV–​ I. The same melody is then repeated with the final note changed to D♮. The harmonization also changes: F–​c–​E♭–​D, suggesting either G minor or B♭ major but irregular in either key. The B♭-​major tonic follows directly.

Il giuramento, Act 3 Table 11.2 outlines this remarkable act, which Mercadante seems to have modeled on the last act of Rossini’s Otello, analyzed in ­chapter 7.8 A romanza for Elaisa is followed by a four-​movement duet with Viscardo (in Otello the duet has only two movements). The stabbing takes place, as in Otello, at the end of the cabaletta; unlike Otello, the heroine survives for a few minutes. In the final section, labeled Finale ultimo in the table, Bianca awakes from her induced sleep; she and Elaisa reveal the truth to Viscardo; Elaisa sings a short andante in which she expresses happiness, blesses Viscardo, and dies. The opera ends with a twelve-​measure allegro in which Viscardo and Bianca express their dismay. The abrupt, fast-​tempo, minor-​key curtain is often regarded as a Verdian characteristic—​the end of Il trovatore is a classic example—​but it is found in Mercadante’s and Donizetti’s melodrammi of the late 1830s and early 1840s, and earlier still (as we have seen) in Bellini’s Norma. Example 11.9 shows the act’s tonal plan in Schenkerian notation, with emphasis on transitions between harmonically closed movements; the latter are represented by whole notes. The orchestral prelude is shown as harmonically closed even though it ends on V of its key, E♭ major. Resolution to E♭:I occurs three measures into the scena. Most of the act follows a pattern of flatward motion, starting from a key that has three flats already. This can be verified by looking at the whole notes in the graph: they move systematically from E♭ major (three flats) to A♭ major (four flats) to D♭ major (five flats) to E♭ minor (six flats). In the first scena, E♭ begins as a tonic and ends as V of A♭, the key of Elaisa’s romanza. The second scena, preceding the duet, reinforces A♭. The tempo d’attacco includes parallel but non-​consecutive statements of a concise lyric form analyzed in ­chapter 5 (­example 5.5). The first statement, for Viscardo, is in A♭ major; the second, for Elaisa, is in G♭. Between these statements is a short passage of dialogue that moves through B♭ minor (five flats) and lands on V of E♭ minor (six flats) before turning to that key’s relative major. Having touched on the six-​flat system, the duet moves back to five flats (D♭ major) for the slow movement; the cabaletta returns to six flats in the guise of E♭ minor. It is in this gloomy key—​parallel minor to the act’s opening—​that the murder occurs. Compare the table in Pulignano, “Il giuramento” di Rossi e Mercadante, 84. 8

Table 11.2.  Il giuramento, act 3 Scena e Romanza Prelude Scena 1 Romanza Scena e Duetto Scena 2 Tempo d’attacco Viscardo Dialogue Elaisa Dialogue Slow movement Tempo di mezzo Cabaletta Finale ultimo Dialogue Bianca awakes

E♭

E♭ becomes A♭:VA A♭

A♭→b♭→A♭:VA A♭ (lyric form)

modulating; ends on e♭:VA

G♭ (repeats Viscardo’s lyric form a whole step lower) e♭→D♭:VA D♭

D♭→b♭→e♭:VA e♭

e♭; descends in whole steps, e♭→A (=​d:VA) d→F

Andante sostenuto (Elaisa)

F→f

Allegro

f

Example 11.9.  Il giuramento, act 3: A Schenkerian reduction of the bass line

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  385

If the opera had ended with Elaisa’s murder, the cabaletta’s E♭ minor might have been heard as a sign of tonal return, even tonal closure, with a dramatically appropriate change to the minor mode. But the final scene—​composed partly to versi sciolti, partly to versi lirici—​moves decisively away from E♭. As the latter part of the duet moved from D♭ (slow movement) to E♭ (cabaletta), what I have labeled finale ultimo moves up another whole step, from E♭ to F. Elaisa’s rapturous andante is in F major, but the minor mode resumes with her last breath. The final allegro is little more than an F-​minor cadence; its inclusion of the Neapolitan (G♭ major) reminds the listener of flatter realms. Two modulatory passages in the finale involve sequential transpositions by whole steps, outlining segments of the “odd” whole-​tone scale, C21. Near the beginning of scena 1, an ascent from E♭ to B♮ leads to a passage that tonicizes E minor but prolongs B-​as-​dominant; a deceptive cadence then leads the bass to C, which is soon reinterpreted as A♭:iii. Near the beginning of the finale ultimo, a whole-​tone descent leads from E♭ to A♮, which resolves to D minor for Bianca’s awakening. This D minor helps to prepare Elaisa’s F-​major andante.

Donizetti’s Operas, 1838–​1843 Donizetti moved to Paris in the autumn of 1838 to complete Les martyrs, a French revision of his Italian opera Poliuto. It was the first of his three completed grands opéras; the other two, La favorite (1840) and Dom Sébastien (1843), were composed entirely in French. During his work on Les martyrs he also composed L’ange de Nisida (1839) for the Théâtre de la Renaissance, recycling it into La favorite after the intended theater went bankrupt.9 He also wrote two works for the Opéra-​ Comique, La fille du régiment (1840) and Rita (1841), of which only the former was performed in his lifetime. For the Théâtre-​ Italien he wrote his comic masterpiece, Don Pasquale (1842). With new or revived operas by Donizetti playing at every opera house in Paris, one can understand why Berlioz accused him of executing, in effect, a hostile takeover of French operatic life.10 Meanwhile there were Adelia (1841) for Rome and Maria Padilla (1841) for Milan. For Vienna, where he was appointed court composer in 1842, Donizetti composed two operas: Linda di Chamounix, an opera semiseria (1842); and the tragic melodrama Maria di Rohan (1843), which he later revised for Paris. Caterina Cornaro (1842–​1843) was intended originally for Vienna but was transferred to Naples while Donizetti was still composing it.11

9 On the history of L’ange de Nisida and its relation to La favorite, see Candida Mantica, “Gaetano Donizetti’s L’ange de Nisida and opéra de genre in Mid-​Nineteenth-​Century Paris,” Il saggiatore musicale 26 (2019): 61–​102. 10 The relevant passages are quoted in William Ashbrook, Donizetti and His Operas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 146–​47. 11 Ashbrook, Donizetti, 165–​70 and 178–​83.

386  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera It is not only the number of operas that Donizetti composed in five years that astonishes; the range of genres and styles is equally impressive. Donizetti tailored his style to the city for which he was composing. He cultivated a simple, dignified style for his grands opéras, especially La favorite and Dom Sébastien. He developed a distinct style for Vienna, which Leopold Kantner has identified as an adaptation of Donizetti’s French style.12 The Vienna style is exemplified most radically by Maria di Rohan. This opera is less ornate vocally than earlier Italian works such as Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor; it translates Romantic drama more directly into operatic terms, with less concern for Italian operatic conventions. In its original, Vienna version, Maria di Rohan is also extremely concise, as Verdi’s operas of the 1840s would be. In the final years of Donizetti’s career, he, Mercadante, and Verdi were pointing in similar directions.

La favorite, Act 4 In fourteenth-​century Castile, Fernand, a novice in the monastery of Santiago de Compostela, has fallen in love with the noblewoman Léonor de Guzman. Abandoning his vocation, he has married her, having first distinguished himself in military service. Léonor is the king’s mistress, but Fernand learns this only after the wedding, when he is mocked by the court. Enraged, he denounces the king, breaks his sword, and returns to the monastery. In act 4, set in the monastery, Fernand takes his vows, but Léonor, who is dying, has followed him, disguised as a novice. He confesses his love, and Léonor dies forgiven. Most of the music of act 4 was originally composed for L’ange de Nisida. The act consists of a Prélude and two numbers, nos. 14 and 15 in the opera. Rebecca Harris-​Warrick, editor of the critical edition, assigns the title Choeur, Récitatif et Romance to no. 14 and Final to no. 15. More appropriate titles, in my view, would be Scène et Romance for no. 14 and Scène et Duo final for no. 15. In the following discussion I refer to the act’s divisions simply as “prelude,” “no. 14,” and “no. 15.” Table 11.3 offers an outline of act 4. The main key is C major, but no. 14 begins in E major and no. 15 ends in B♭ minor. The melody played by unaccompanied cellos in the prelude returns as the cabaletta of no. 15. The music played by the solo organ in the prelude also returns in no. 15, transposed to A♭ major and sung by the monks and Fernand. The monastery is governed by Balthazar, who is both father superior and father to the spurned Queen of Castile. The act’s sacred setting motivates passages for solo organ, solemn phrases for the brass, chant-​like recitatives for Balthazar, and choral responses by the monks. Ritual scenes in operas from Lohengrin to Aida

12 Leopold M. Kantner, “Donizettis Wiener Opern, gesehen unter dem Aspekt ihrer stilistischen Bedeutung,” in Kantner, ed., Donizetti in Wien (Vienna: Praesens, 1998), 122–​27. For a detailed view of Donizetti’s reception in Vienna, see Claudio Vellutini, “Donizetti, Vienna, Cosmopolitanism,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 73 (2020): 1–​52.

Table 11.3. Donizetti, La favorite, act 4 Prélude. C→e:VA No. 14. Scène et Romance. E→C Chorus: E Parlante: lyric form in orchestra; choral chant Modulation to C in unison texture Arioso (Balthazar and chorus): C

Recitative (Balthazar and Fernand): C→c:VA; C→a:VA (=​C:III♯) Romance: C

No. 15. Scène et Duo final. [F→ a:VA] a→C→A♭→e→C; c→f→b♭ Scena 1: F→B♭→E♭→A♭

Scena 2: c:VA; c→C; a, ending on a:VA (=​C:III♯) Tempo d’attacco: a→C; C→A♭:VA Fernand: a→C

Léonor (recitative): C→F→A♭:VA

Slow movement: a♭→A♭ Léonor: a♭

Fernand (dissimilar reply): A♭

Léonor and Fernand (coda, with cadenza): A♭

Tempo di mezzo: c→E♭; c:VA→e:VA; e; a:VA (=​C:III♯)→C

Cabaletta: C→c

Fernand: C Léonor: C, ending with deceptive cadence on c:VI (=​A♭) Chorus: c:VI–​V–​i Catastrophe: c→f→b♭ Lent: c→f

Allegro agitato: f, ending f:VA Plus pressé: b♭:VA Maestoso: b♭

388  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera owe something to this act. Richard Wagner, then living in Paris, prepared the vocal score for publication. Many editions of La favorite do not separate the thirty-​measure Prélude (example 11.10) from no. 14, but I will do so here. Its key of C major is the opening key of acts 1 and 2 and the closing key of act 3.13 Although most of the prelude expresses the C-​ major tonality clearly, with stepwise descents from 5̂ to 1̂ in mm. 5–​8 and 18–​21, the cello melody in mm. 9–​13 begins and ends on E. It includes two related motives, bracketed in the example: the double neighbor F–​E–​D♯–​E (Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol in A minor) and the upper-​neighbor figure F–​E (Le–​Sol). As noted earlier, this cello melody will become the theme of the duet cabaletta. The upper-​neighbor figure is transposed a fifth higher, to C–​B, as the prelude modulates toward E minor in its final measures. These figures are also bracketed (mm. 27–​30). So is the organ motive in mm. 1–​2, C–​E–​G–​A–​G. Its whole-​step upper neighbor, G–​A–​G, contrasts with the minor or Phrygian neighboring figures heard elsewhere in the prelude. The pairing of C and E pervades no. 14. The number begins in E major with a choral recitative, marked Maestoso, in which the monks chant on 5̂ and 1̂, broadening occasionally to full E major triads. The musical interest lies in the orchestral brass, which play a four-​phrase lyric form of the AABA type, followed by a short coda.14 The lyric form’s head motive (example 11.11a) is a lightly disguised transposition of the prelude’s head motive (example 11.10, mm. 1–​2). The relation between the two becomes more obvious when the brass chorale returns in C major, the act’s opening key (example 11.11b) . Following the choral recitative, a modulation in unison texture leads from E major back to C major. Balthazar sings a C-​major arioso, also in unison texture, and the monks repeat it in full harmony. The arioso begins (example 11.12) with a retrograde statement of the prelude’s head motive, G–​A–​G–​E–​C, and it continues with the upper-​ neighbor figure E–​F–​E, also from the prelude. The movement is rounded off with example 11.11b, underscoring the motion from E to C that has taken place since the beginning of no. 14. A recitative for Balthazar and Fernand follows, modulating far to the flat side before returning to C major for the romance “Ange si pur.” The romance is shown in example 11.13. The piece, composed to two quatrains of octosyllables (eight-​syllable lines), is in ABA form, a traditional form for French arias. The critical edition gives the text as follows: Ange si pur, que dans un songe J’ai cru trouver, vous que j’aimais! Avec l’espoir, triste mensonge! Envolez-​vous et pour jamais. En moi, pour l’amour d’une femme, De Dieu l’amour avait faibli; Pitié! je t’ai rendu mon âme, Pitié, Seigneur, rends-​moi l’oubli.

13 The opera’s Prélude begins in C minor and ends in C major. 14 The lyric form’s second phrase ends with a Phrygian cadence on B instead of the conventional PAC.

Example 11.10.  Donizetti, La favorite, act 4, Prélude (complete)

390  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 11.11.  La favorite, act 4: Two passages from no. 14

a. mm. 1–​5 b. mm. 111–​15 Example 11.12.  La favorite, no. 14, mm. 67–​70

In the first quatrain, each line has a clear caesura after the fourth syllable. These lines resemble not Italian ottonari but doubled quinari tronchi—​quinari with tronco endings. Syllables 4 and 8 carry the main accents. Throughout the first A section (mm. 186–​95), Donizetti places these accented syllables on beat 3 of the  measure, not on beat 1. The third-​beat emphasis causes both the cadential 64 (m. 194) and the final tonic (m. 195) to arrive on beat 3. Because, for most of the period, each harmony occupies one notated measure, there is no question of shifted or misplaced bar lines, nor of a compound  meter in the manner of the eighteenth century.15 Neither Donizetti nor his contemporaries set Italian line-​endings on relatively weak beats, but it is fairly common in French opera of the time, especially opéra comique.16 15 See c­ hapter 4. 16 See Andrew Pau, “‘Sous le rythme de la chanson’: Rhythm, Text, and Diegetic Performance in Nineteenth-​Century French Opera,” Music Theory Online 21, no. 3 (September 2015).

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  391 Example 11.13.  No. 14, Romance

392  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 11.13.  Continued

In the second quatrain, each line has three accents: an initial accent on syllable 2, a medial accent whose position varies, and a final accent on syllable 8. (In French verse, the final accent in a line, the accent tonique, is analogous to the accento comune in Italian.) Although the verse meter remains octosyllable, the closest Italian equivalent is no longer quinario doppio but novenario, with alternating piano and tronco endings. In the B section, which sets this quatrain (mm. 197–​205), Donizetti treats each line as a unit, placing the accented syllables 2 and 8 on downbeats. This is similar to the way an Italian composer would set decasillabi, although in decasillabo each of the three accents (syllables 3, 6, and 9) has a fixed position within the line.17 In the A′ section (mm. 206–​16), accents fall once again on beat 3, but Donizetti places them on beat 1 in the final cadence and the coda that follows (mm. 216–​21). 17 The resemblance of novenari to decasillabi has been advanced as a reason for the rarity of novenario in nineteenth-​century Italian opera. See Moreen, Integration, 15–​16.

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  393 The melody and harmony of Fernand’s romance continue to reflect the pairing of C and E. The A section’s antecedent phrase, mm. 186–​89, begins and ends on triads of C major and E major respectively. This phrase represents the antecedent half of a romanesca; the melody also resembles that of a passamezzo antico. If the entire period were composed as a romanesca, it would end with a cadence in A minor, not C major; E–​D–​C–​B would represent a descent from 5̂, not 3̂. The ambiguity between C major and A minor in this phrase recalls the relative-​key ambiguity that Basevi notes in the antecedent phrase of “Stride la vampa” from Verdi’s Il trovatore, discussed in ­chapter 1. The first half of the B section, mm. 197–​200, resembles the B phrase of a lyric form in its repetition of a two-​measure unit. What is repeated is the double-​neighbor figure from the Prélude, F♮–​E–​D♯–​E. The first statement is harmonized non-​cadentially in C major, the second cadentially in E minor. For the second half of the section, Donizetti moves to a dominant pedal in C minor. By using C minor rather than C major, he recontextualizes the previous D♯ as E♭. The diminished-​seventh chord from m. 198 returns in a new guise in m. 204 (see the asterisks in the example). The fourth measure of the A′ section, m. 209, contains an interesting change. Instead of remaining on E major as in m. 4, Donizetti outlines C:viio in the second half of the measure, tipping the tonal balance toward C. The coda begins like the B section, with the double-​neighbor figure around E, now in the incomplete form F♮–​D♯–​E. The figure itself is harmonized in E, but the descending-​fifths progression is extended into a complete diatonic circle of fifths, from C major (m. 216, beat 1) to C major (m. 218, beat 1). Implications of E minor and A minor have been brought under C major’s control. Metrically, beat 3 has submitted to the power of beat 1, on which all accents toniques are now placed. E4 acts a focal pitch in Fernand’s melodic line, especially in mm. 197–​200 and from m. 215 to the end. To lengthen 3̂ above a cadential V7, as Donizetti does in mm. 215, 217, and 219, is a conventional gesture for bel canto composers, but in this context the emphasis on E4 seems more than conventional. Number 15 begins in F major, but the duet proper—​a complete solita forma with preceding scena—​is primarily in C. In table 11.3 I have divided the music that precedes the tempo d’attacco into two parts: a scena for the finale, marked Scena 1; and a shorter scena for the duet, marked Scena 2. The beginning of Scena 2 is marked by a change from slow to fast tempo and by the arrival of c:VA. The duet is both preceded and followed by passages that modulate in descending fifths, arriving at keys with either four flats (A♭ major) or five (B♭ minor). Like Mercadante’s Il giuramento, the opera’s ending anticipates Verdi’s tendency to end tragic operas in minor keys with many flats.18 Fernand is the only major character who sings in both nos. 14 and 15. His music, much of which is in C major, exhibits a sonorità of E4. E4 is emphasized many times and in many contexts: as third of C major; as root of E major or E minor, when one of those triads serves as a tonic; as root of E major when it 18 See David Rosen, “How Verdi’s Serious Operas End,” Verdi Newsletter 20 (1992): 9–​15. At the premiere of La favorite, the opera apparently ended with a chorus of monks in E♭ major; this is the ending of L’ange de Nisida, on which La favorite was based. The chorus was suppressed during the initial run of performances, and four measures of B♭ minor chords were substituted. The critical edition adopts the B♭-​minor ending in the main text, printing the chorus in an appendix.

394  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera functions as V of A minor; and as fifth of A minor’s tonic triad. E is often embellished with F as an upper neighbor, making E–​F–​E the most important pitch motive in the act. The Phrygian quality of this motive forms part of the act’s musical identity; Verdi would have called it a musical color (tinta musicale). Examples 11.10 and 11.12–​11.14 illustrate the harmonic contexts in which Fernand’s E is placed. As we have seen, E4 is highlighted in the Prélude as focal pitch of the theme played by unaccompanied cellos (example 11.10, mm. 9–​13). The choral recitative that begins no. 14 makes uses of its tonic note, E, as a reciting tone, and the following move away from E major begins with the isolated dyad E–​F (example 11.14a). Balthazar emphasizes E–​F–​E, in a C-​major context, in his arioso (example 11.12). The use of E4 in Fernand’s romance has already been noted. In no. 15, E4 returns to a prominent role just before the tempo d’attacco of the duet. As shown in example 11.14b, the moment of mutual recognition between Fernand and the disguised Léonor is accompanied by the Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol motive from the Prélude, F–​E–​D♯–​E, in the vocal lines (mm. 131–​33) and the bass (mm. 132–​35). Fernand’s opening period in the tempo d’attacco hovers around E4 in an A-​minor context (11.14c). Much as in the romanza “Una furtiva lagrima” from Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, 5̂ of the minor key is sustained into a section in the relative major, where the same pitch becomes 3̂ (11.14d).19 The central part of the tempo di mezzo prolongs an E harmony that begins as e:i and ends as a:VA. The dominant pedal on E is melodized, primarily by Léonor, with repetitions of E–​F–​E (11.14e, mm. 266–​68 and 270–​72). The cabaletta (11.14f) also centers melodically on E; its first statement is sung by Fernand. This melody is, as we know, the cello theme from the Prélude. Immediately after Léonor dies, in the section labeled “Catastrophe” in table 11.3, Fernand sings a B♭-​minor strain (not shown) based on example 11.14e. Because this statement is a semitone higher than the previous one, the upper-​neighbor figure E–​ F–​E becomes F–​G♭–​F. Fernand then calls for help (“Au secours! au secours!”) to the pitches F4–​E♮4 (11.14g).20 E is now leading tone to F, which is itself b♭:V. Throughout the act, a further means of musical cross-​reference is provided by keys, harmonies, and individual pitches related by major third: C, or a C major triad, in E-​major contexts; E major triads in C-​major contexts; G♯/​A♭, or an A♭ major triad, in C-​major contexts. The larger construct is C40, the major-​third cycle C–​E–​A♭, which in this act is centered on C. We have already seen that a brass chorale played first in E major (no. 14) is later repeated in C major. Similarly, an organ phrase first heard in C major, in the Prélude, is later sung in A♭ major (no. 15, scena). Within no. 14 and the duet portion of no. 15, E (mostly major) and A♭ (both modes) are the keys principally used to contrast with C (both modes). The appearance of E major triads in C-​major music, acting simultaneously as a:VA and C:III♯, has already been demonstrated (table 11.3), although there are instances 19 Comparison might also be made to the tempo d’attacco of the Adalgisa–​Pollione duet in Norma, which has not only a similar harmonic and melodic trajectory but also a similar accompanying figure. 20 The critical edition offers G4 as an alternative to E4 in m. 384. The vocal score prepared by Richard Wagner has G4.

Example 11.14.  La favorite, act 4: Seven passages that emphasize E4

Example 11.14.  Continued

a. No. 14, mm. 55–​60 (transition from the chorus to Balthazar’s arioso) b. No. 15, mm. 131–​35 (end of the scena) c. No. 15, mm. 137–​48 (tempo d’attacco) d. No. 15, mm. 152–​56 e. No. 15, mm. 266–​72 (tempo di mezzo) f. No. 15, mm. 285–​88 (beginning of the cabaletta) g. No. 15, mm. 380–​84

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  397

Example 11.15.  La favorite, act 4: Two uses of ♭VI in service of C40

a. No. 14, 11–​18 (in E major) b. No. 15, 313–​17 (in C major) beyond those shown. All of these highlight the chromatic pitch G♯. The lower flat mediant, ♭VI, is also a factor. In the E-​major opening of no. 14, the second phrase moves to a C major triad, E:♭VI, in m. 16, as the upper voice reaches E5 as the goal of a chromatic ascent (example 11.15a). The C-​major cabaletta in no. 15 fails to close because of another move to ♭VI, this one a wrenching deceptive cadence to A♭ (11.15b) .

The End of Maria di Rohan The most popular of Donizetti’s late operas is Don Pasquale, a comedy. Linda di Chamounix, a delightful opera semiseria composed for Vienna, has not appeared

398  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera at the Metropolitan Opera since the 1930s; it is remembered today for the cabaletta “O luce di quest’anima,” which was added for a Parisian revival. Donizetti’s last tragic operas in Italian—​Adelia, Maria Padilla, Caterina Cornaro, and Maria di Rohan—​are rarely staged, although Maria di Rohan is the best known of the group. Maria di Rohan has only three leading roles, but the plot is complicated. The Duke of Chevreuse (baritone) and the Count of Chalais (tenor) are allies at the dangerous court of King Louis XIII, whose chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, loses and regains power during the opera, profoundly affecting the lives of the principals. Maria is married to Chevreuse but does not love him. In act 1, Chalais, who loves Maria, saves Chevreuse’s life. In act 2, Chevreuse returns the favor by fighting a duel in Chalais’ place; he is wounded. In act 3, a courtier opposed to Chalais delivers incriminating evidence to Chevreuse about Chalais and Maria; Chevreuse challenges his friend to a duel. As he awaits arrest, Chalais uses the dueling pistol to commit suicide. Chevreuse condemns Maria to a life of infamy as the curtain falls. The end of Maria di Rohan prefigures the ends of several Verdi operas, especially Luisa Miller and Il trovatore. Each of these operas ends, like Mercadante’s Il giuramento, with a duet or trio in which the chorus does not participate. These “naturalistic” endings are based on the spoken dramas from which the operas’ libretti were adapted. Some critics judged them by theatrical rather than operatic standards. The anonymous critic of L’Illustration (Paris) wrote that “all of these elements of terror and pity make the denouement of Maria di Rohan one of the best-​conceived and most vigorously executed scenes in contemporary theater.”21 Each of the finales cited is based on la solita forma, but the end of the musical form is followed by a section in rapid tempo that embodies the catastrophe and brings down the curtain. These kinetic endings stand in contrast to the static aria finale that ends serious operas such as Rossini’s La donna del lago and Zelmira, Bellini’s Il pirata and La straniera, and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Roberto Devereux. Even Wagner’s Tristan and Götterdämmerung end with what is, in effect, an aria finale for the heroine.22 It is not as though Donizetti abandoned the aria finale: the original version of Caterina Cornaro ends with one,23 and Maria Padilla ends with a cabaletta for the title character. Of the endings just mentioned, that of Maria di Rohan is by far the most radical. In fact, Donizetti had trouble deciding how to end the opera. He wrote a final cabaletta for Maria but cut it just before the premiere, so late that its text appeared in the printed libretto.24 In the version performed at the Vienna premiere, the opera ends as shown in example 11.16.

21 L’Illustration, 25 November 1843; quoted in Donizetti, Maria di Rohan, critical edition by Luca Zoppelli; vocal score, xlviii. 22 Karol Berger’s Beyond Reason: Wagner contra Nietzsche (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016) traces the dependence of Wagner’s operatic forms on those of Italian opera. 23 One of Donizetti’s last compositional acts (1845) was a new finale for Caterina Cornaro in which there is no aria finale. Ashbrook, Donizetti, 487. 24 Maria di Rohan, critical edition by Luca Zoppelli; vocal score, xlvii.

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  399 Example 11.16.  Maria di Rohan, act 3, Finale, mm. 263–​77 (end of the opera)

400  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 11.4.  Maria di Rohan, act 3, nos. 7–​8 No. 7: Scena ed Aria Chevreuse Scena Slow movement Tempo di mezzo Cabaletta No. 8: Gran Scena e Terzetto Finale III Scena Tempo d’attacco (Chevreuse, Maria) Recitative Slow movement (Chevreuse, Maria) Transition Tempo di mezzo (Chalais, Chevreuse, Maria) Stretta (Chevreuse, Chalais, Maria) Catastrophe B♭→ d:Ger+​6→D:VA (pistol shot)

C→E♭; ends E♭:VA G♭

B♭→b♭:VA B♭

d→D→d; ends d:VA D→b; ends b:VA ends D:VA D E♭:VA

E♭; C:VA→b♭:VA B♭→d→B♭

B♭→d:V–​VI (deceptive cadence)

d:V–​VI (Chevreuse denounces Maria) Plagal progressions extend B♭ as a quasi-​tonic

Table 11.4 provides context by showing the keys of the last two numbers, Chevreuse’s aria and the finale; static movements are boldfaced. The keys of these movements form the major-​third cycle D–​G♭–​B♭, or C42. B♭ major is the key of the cabaletta of no. 7 and the stretta of no. 8; the latter includes a section in D minor. This major-​third cycle, and the repeated use of B♭ major as a goal, may help to explain the opera’s astonishing ending. The finale’s overall shape resembles that of the second-​act finale in Il giuramento, discussed earlier: a single solita forma is set for two characters in its first half (tempo d’attacco and slow movement), for three in its second half (tempo di mezzo and stretta). The first half of Donizetti’s finale is set primarily in D major. The second half begins in E♭ major but settles into B♭. Had the opera ended with the planned cabaletta for Maria, which was also in B♭, that key would have been stabilized despite the return to D major that accompanies Chalais’ suicide, and despite the unusual approach to B♭ major via a deceptive cadence (example 11.16, mm. 268–​69).25 Without the cabaletta, the opera ends with the deceptive cadence, 25 I regard the progression d:V–​VI as a deceptive cadence even though C♯, not A, is in the bass in mm. 264–​65.

  Around 1840: Mercadante and Donizetti  T  401

on a B♭ major triad that represents D:♭VI. The keys of D and B♭ are intertwined from the tempo di mezzo of no. 7 through the end of no. 8, but the curtain falls before the issue of tonal priority has been decided. It is difficult to think of another operatic ending in the nineteenth century in which traditional musical requirements are so openly sacrificed to the drama. Donizetti was not bothered by the lack of tonal resolution: when he revised the opera for Naples in 1844, he cut fifteen additional measures from the finale.26

26 Maria di Rohan, critical edition by Luca Zoppelli; vocal score, xlix and lxv.

PART IV

Verdi’s Sedici anni Verdi’s Chiaroscuro A few months before his nineteenth birthday, Verdi’s application for admission to the Milan Conservatory was rejected; among other things, he was considered too old. Instead of matriculating, he studied privately with the composer Vincenzo Lavigna (1776–​1836), who served at La Scala as maestro concertatore—​in modern terms, a combination of conductor and répétiteur.1 Lavigna had been trained in Naples, but in the Milanese spirit he introduced Verdi to the music of Haydn and Mozart, especially Haydn’s Creation and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.2 It was as a substitute conductor, leading a rehearsal of The Creation from the piano, that the twenty-​year-​old Verdi enjoyed one of his first professional successes.3 I begin my treatment of Verdi with Haydn’s Creation because that work embodies something that would occupy Verdi through most of his career: the juxtaposition within a single work of light and shade, brightness and darkness, comedy and tragedy. I am referring, of course, to the contrast between Haydn’s C-​ minor overture, entitled “The Representation of Chaos,” and the explosion of C major as the chorus sings “and there was light.” Anselm Gerhard cites Haydn’s oratorio in a study of chiaroscuro in Verdi’s early opera Attila.4 That work, too, opens with a dark C-​minor prelude. There, too, the orchestra (without chorus) depicts a C-​major sunrise. Verdi’s chiaroscuro rests on multiple foundations. A standardized grouping of vocal types—​especially the triangle of soprano, tenor, and high baritone—​is one.5 1 The most complete work on Verdi’s musical education is Roberta Montemorra Marvin, Verdi the Student—​Verdi the Teacher (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 2010). 2 On the availability of Viennese Classic music in the Milan of Verdi’s youth, see Roger Parker, “‘Classical’ Music in Milan during Verdi’s Formative Years,” in Parker, Studies in Early Verdi, 1832–​ 1844 (New York: Garland, 1989), 39–​61. 3 The story, reported by Verdi, is quoted in Marvin, Verdi the Student, 47, and in most biographies. 4 Anselm Gerhard, “Verdi’s Attila: A Study in Chiaroscuro,” Cambridge Opera Journal 21 (2010): 279–​89. 5 This configuration of vocal types was favored by Donizetti in his later operas, including Maria di Rohan.

404  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Orchestration is another. A third is Verdi’s use of keys and key relations as musical signifiers. This last factor will be a principal focus here and in the chapters that follow. The subject is a large one, and it may be divided into two parts. Certain keys, or groups of keys, may suggest expressive meanings by themselves, based on mode (major or minor) and location on the circle of fifths. I call this absolute key-​ signification. Alternatively, relations between keys, or groups of keys, within a single opera may signify dramatic oppositions. This is relative key-​signification. The analogy to absolute and relative pitch is intentional. In Italy before Verdi’s time, the use of keys and key relations for constructive or expressive purposes would have collided with the freedom with which singers treated transpositions, not to mention the liberties taken by singers and impresarios to add and subtract numbers at will. Numbers or parts of numbers might be cut, transposed, or shifted from one opera to another. Key relations were of little concern, and the composer had no say in the matter. It was during Verdi’s career that this practice began to change. Scholars have taken too lightly Verdi’s declaration, at the time of Macbeth (1847), that fines should be levied on impresarios who permitted transpositions or substitute numbers in his operas, because no such fines were ever collected.6 But the edict expressed Verdi’s intentions; what’s more, his decree had been anticipated by Mercadante a decade earlier.7 As Verdi’s career progressed, his musical texts assumed increasingly binding force. It took decades and the continued evolution of European (not just Italian) operatic culture, but Verdi eventually succeeded in bending Italian operatic practice to his will. However much he may have transposed while he composed, by the late 1840s he intended his musical texts, once completed, to be performed more or less as they stood. By 1871, when the conductor had replaced the singer as tyrant of the opera house, he complained of conductors’ excesses.8 For all his sympathy with singers, the only autocrat Verdi thought fit to rule the opera house was the composer, especially if that composer was himself. Because this attitude toward an opera’s musical text arose first in German-​ speaking countries, it is in operas by Germans that we first find examples of the elaborate key schemes, often with referential meanings, that we find in many operas by Verdi. Beethoven’s Fidelio is an early milestone: it is based in part on the major-​ third cycle C major (freedom)/​ E major (Leonora’s heroism)/​ A♭ major

6 The passage, from a letter to Verdi’s publisher Ricordi, is often quoted. Roger Parker’s translation reads: “In order to prevent the alterations which Theatres make to operatic works, it is prohibited to subject the score in question to any addition, any mutilation, transposition, in short to any alteration which requires the smallest change in the orchestration, under threat of 1,000 francs fine which I will extract through you from any theatre where alterations are made to the score.” Parker, Studies, 166. 7 See the sensible (and historically grounded) discussion of this point in Fabrizio Della Seta, Not without Madness: Perspectives on Opera, trans. Mark Weir (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 182–​89. For Mercadante’s attitude, see ­chapter 11. 8 See Verdi’s letter of 11 April 1871 to Giulio Ricordi in Verdi, I Copialettere, 255–​57; a summary in English may be found in George Whitney Martin, Verdi: His Music, Life and Times (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1963), 385. See also Mary Phillips-​Matz, Verdi: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 750.

  Verdi’s Sedici anni   T  405 (Florestan’s suffering). Weber’s Der Freischütz and Euryanthe are two others. As Michael Tusa has demonstrated, a referential network of keys runs throughout Euryanthe, an opera that Verdi may or may not have known (Basevi mentions it in his chapter on Luisa Miller).9 Perhaps most relevant to Verdi is Meyerbeer, in whose operas associations between keys and dramatic situations are prominent. Consider the key of B minor. Famously called the “black key” (schwarze Tonart) by Beethoven in his sketches for the Piano Sonata op. 106, B minor is used to portray evil forces in a series of operas by German-​born composers, including Spohr’s Faust (1816), Weber’s Euryanthe (1823), Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831), and Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (1840). According to Clive Brown, Spohr associated B minor with witchcraft and sorcery.10 In Robert le diable, B minor is associated with Bertram in his role as Satan’s emissary. Composers’ placement of specific kinds of music in specific keys would have made little sense in an operatic culture in which liberty of transposition was unrestricted. A recent, 800-​page study by Peter Gisi explores the meanings of Verdi’s key choices in absolute terms.11 Gisi’s typology of keys is as elaborate as the length of his book suggests, and he pushes his thesis too hard at times, but the impulse behind his study is sound. Like many composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Verdi associated certain expressive states or musical topics with certain keys, and those associations are often conventional. That Verdi’s associations did not coincide precisely with those of his German contemporaries is suggested by the fact that Spohr’s overture to Macbeth (1825) is in B minor, whereas B minor hardly figures in Verdi’s Macbeth in its original version (1847). Gisi’s treatment of B minor is brief because, according to his calculations, Verdi uses no key less frequently than this one. One problem with Gisi’s approach is that he organizes his study around keys paired by a common tonic, such as G minor and G major. This is a sense of key relation inherited from the Viennese Classics. As we have seen in this book, nineteenth-​century Italians were at least as likely to pair relative keys, keys with a common key signature, such as G major and E minor. Instead of the pitch-​class identity of the tonic, the number of pitch classes shared by two diatonic scales tended to prevail as a measure of tonal distance. In other words, identity of system took precedence over identity of tonic—​not always, but often.12 This is why operatic pezzi of the 1830s and 1840s, especially slow movements, so readily begin in a minor key and end in the relative major.

Michael Tusa, “Euryanthe” and Carl Maria von Weber’s Dramaturgy of German Opera (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 160–​61 and passim; Basevi, The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, 141. 10 Clive Brown, Louis Spohr: A Critical Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 189. 11 Peter Gisi, Verdis Welten: Neuinterpretation der Werke im Spiegel der Tonarten (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013). 12 An ambitious study, quite different from this one, that takes system rather than tonic as its starting point is Henry Burnett and Roy Nitzberg, Composition, Chromaticism, and the Developmental Process: A New Theory of Tonality (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 9

406  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Defining key relations by the number of common tones creates the possibility of partitioning the twenty-​four-​key universe into groups of keys based on scalar similarities. (The number 24 is conventional, but Verdi’s tonal universe actually contains at least thirty keys.) This means that keys with a similar number of sharps or flats may group together as a family of keys—​or, as I shall call it, a tonal field.13 Like real fields, tonal fields require fences to separate them. To keep tonal fields aurally distinct over the course of an evening-​length work, a composer might use certain keys or systems less frequently or not at all, treating them as semiotic demilitarized zones or depopulated boundary territories. At the far reaches of the tonal universe, keys with many sharps might merge with many-​flatted keys into a single field of remote keys. Because the natural system, C major/​A minor, occupies a unique position of neutrality between the sharp and flat halves of the universe, it tends to be understood as privileged or central, a centrality clearly exhibited by C major in Fidelio. Within the pair C major/​A minor, C major is especially privileged. Not only is A minor’s diatony less pure (because G♯ is required at cadences), but modes with a major third have been regarded as more “natural” in Western music theory since the time of Zarlino, and especially since Rameau.14 Because tonal fields are based on shared scalar content, they easily encompass diatonic modes beyond major and minor. Verdi employs such modes less often than many later composers, but we saw in c­hapter 1 that the Phrygian mode appears in Il trovatore. Phrygian and other modes become more common in Verdi’s later operas; they contribute local color to Don Carlos and Aida in particular. To the extent that a composer uses tonal fields, and to the extent that his musical language is melody-​oriented, his melodies will be predominantly diatonic rather than chromatic. Otherwise, tonal fields would become ill-​ defined, weakening their ability to be set in mutual opposition. This diatonic quality of melody largely prevails in the Verdi operas covered in this book. Those operas were created during the years 1843–​1858, which coincide almost exactly with the sedici anni di galera, or sixteen years’ imprisonment, of which Verdi complained in a famous letter of 1858, dating his “imprisonment” from the success of Nabucco (1842).15 From that opera, his third, until his semi-​retirement following Ballo, Verdi was largely locked into the Italian system of operatic production, in which each opera was created under contract to a specific theater for performance on specific dates. After 1845, Verdi increasingly gained the right to choose his own subjects and librettists, and to exert some control over the choice of singers. Greater freedom than this had to wait until Italy was a united country and Verdi, like Meyerbeer, was wealthy enough to say no.

13 The concept of tonal field is explored further in ­chapter 13. The English term and its Italian equivalent, campo tonale, have been used by Carl Schachter and Giorgio Sanguinetti. Campo tonale also has a long history in writings on acoustics. I give the term a different meaning here, one inspired by two-​dimensional charts of key relations such as Gottfried Weber’s. 14 Zarlino, The Art of Counterpoint, trans. Guy Marco and Claude Palisca (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 21–​22; Rameau, Génération harmonique (Paris, 1737), 129–​32. 15 Verdi, letter to Clara Maffei, 12 May 1858, in Copialettere, 572. Phillips-​Matz translates the phrase as “sixteen years in the galleys” (Verdi, 379).

  Verdi’s Sedici anni   T  407

Gisi and Verdian Tonality Gisi’s encyclopedic treatment of key associations confirms quantitatively what many have surely surmised: that Verdi’s operas spend more time in flat keys than in sharp ones. By Gisi’s reckoning, Verdi spends 56 percent of his operatic time in flat keys, 31 percent in sharp keys, and 13 percent in neutral keys, C major or A minor. The reason for the preponderance of flat keys, Gisi guesses, is that Verdi perceived flat keys as “milder and gentler” than sharp ones; his sympathy with his characters led him to be gentle with them.16 The most common Verdian keys, according to Gisi, are these, listed in order of frequency: C major; A♭ major; F major and E♭ major (tied); B♭ major; G major and D♭ major (tied); E major, if a few passages in F♭ major are excluded (otherwise, E major is tied with G and D♭); and A major. All nine of these keys are major. The most common minor key is tenth in frequency overall, and it is F minor, a key that belongs to the same system as A♭ major, the most frequent non-​neutral major key. This coincidence suggests that, for Verdi, the system in which he was writing was at least as important as the identity of the tonic note. Gisi’s table of key-​frequency, reproduced below as table IV.1, is ordered by tonic. It ascends the circle of fifths from C minor/​C major to F minor/​F major, with an enharmonic junction (a change from sharps to flats) at F♯/​G♭. Values in the table represent the number of hours spent in each key, rounded to the nearest quarter-​hour. Gisi does not say how long a passage needs to linger in a given key for that key to count for purposes of his table. For the sake of argument, I take his calculations at face value. If we reorder Gisi’s table using relative rather than parallel keys, and if we use his numbers to calculate values for systems rather than tonics, table IV.2 results. Table IV.3 shows the same information as table IV.2, reordered by frequency of use. The number of systems represented in tables IV.2–​IV.3 is not twelve or thirteen, as might be expected, but sixteen. In addition to systems with 0–​6 sharps or flats, systems with seven sharps, seven flats, and eight flats appear. This illustrates Verdi’s tendency to notate exactly the key he wants, eschewing enharmonic re-​notation even when that might present a simpler appearance. He rarely writes in minor keys containing more than three sharps: he will write D♭ minor (eight flats) rather than C♯ minor (four sharps), and A♭ minor (seven flats) rather than G♯ minor (five sharps). When he writes in D♭ minor or A♭ minor, he almost always uses the minor key as a temporary variant, or darkening, of its parallel major. Thus D♭ minor appears in pieces that are primarily in D♭ major, such as the sleepwalking scene in Macbeth; A♭ minor appears in pieces that are otherwise in A♭ major, like the “Miserere” in Il trovatore (the tempo di mezzo of Leonora’s act 4 aria).17 Verdi is hardly alone among composers in preferring E♭ minor to D♯ minor. Unlike his

16 Gisi, Verdis Welten, 806. 17 The preceding movement of Leonora’s aria begins in F minor and ends in A♭ major.

408  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table IV.1.  Gisi: Duration of individual keys in Verdi’s operas, rounded to the nearest quarter-​hour*

* from Peter Gisi, Verdis Welten, p. 807. © Peter Lang AG, 2013. Reproduced by permission.

D♭-​minor and A♭-​minor passages, he sometimes uses E♭ minor independently of its parallel major.18 Given Verdi’s tendency to notate in flats rather than sharps, it is interesting that F♯ major appears in his scores about as often as G♭ major. This raises the question whether he regarded these as the same key or not. I consider this question in ­chapters 12 and 14. Within Verdi’s tonal universe, the neutral system, C major/​A minor, may represent the theoretical or systematic center, but the practical center—​the center 18 A well-​known example is Amelia’s preghiera in Un ballo in maschera, “Morrò, ma prima in grazia.”

Table IV.2.  Gisi’s table, reordered to show systems Neutral system (C major/​A minor)

6¼ hours

1-​flat system (F major/​D minor)

3¾ hours

2-​flat system (B♭ major/​G minor)

4½ hours

4-​flat system (A♭ major/​F minor)

6 hours

6-​flat system (G♭ major/​E♭ minor)

¾ hour

8-​flat system (D♭ minor; Gisi groups F♭ major with E major)

½ hour

6-​sharp system (F♯ major; D♯ minor does not appear)

½ hour

4-​sharp system (E or F♭ major; C♯ minor very rare)

3 hours

3-​flat system (E♭ major/​C minor)

5¼ hours

5-​flat system (D♭ major/​B♭ minor)

3¾ hours

7-​flat system (A♭ minor; Gisi groups C♭ major with B major)

¾ hour

7-​sharp system (Gisi groups C♯ major with D♭ major)

0 hours

5-​sharp system (B or C♭ major; G♯ minor does not appear)

1 hour

3-​sharp system (A major/​F♯ minor)

3 hours

2-​sharp system (D major/​B minor)

2¾ hours

1-​sharp system (G major/​E minor)

4¾ hours

Table IV.3.  Systems in order of frequency Neutral system

6¼ hours

4 flats

6 hours

3 flats

5¼ hours

1 sharp

4¾ hours

2 flats

4½ hours

1 flat

3¾ hours

5 flats

3¾ hours

3 sharps

3 hours

4 sharps

3 hours

2 sharps

2¾ hours

5 sharps

1 hour

6 flats

¾ hour

7 flats

¾ hour

8 flats

½ hour

6 sharps

½ hour

410  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera defined by use—​tilts toward the flat side. The two perspectives, systematic and practical, conflict, but they coexist in Verdi’s operas. One needs to take both into account. If Verdi’s tonal universe has a practical center, it is the one-​flat system, F major/​ D minor. The amount of music to the sharp side of this system—​21¼ hours, by Gisi’s calculations—​almost equals the amount of music to its flat side—​21½ hours. For Verdi, C major and A minor represent mildly sharp keys in the practical sense, even as they remain neutral systematically. For this reason, I will often use Harold Powers’s terms hard and soft when referring to keys. C major and A minor are hard keys for Verdi. F major is neither hard nor soft. The chapters that follow are ordered chronologically. Chapter 12 treats three operas from the mid-​1840s: Ernani (1844), Giovanna d’Arco (1845), and Attila (1846). Chapter 13 covers two operas from the so-​called Romantic trilogy, Rigoletto (1851) and Il trovatore (composed 1852, premiered 1853). Chapter 14 examines the last three operas from Verdi’s sedici anni: Les vêpres siciliennes (1854–​1855), Simon Boccanegra (1857), and Un ballo in maschera (1857–​1858, premiered 1859). The principal emphasis in these chapters is large-​ scale tonal organization. Although I am hardly the first to explore such matters for certain Verdi operas—​ especially Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and Ballo—​I hope to demonstrate some ways in which tonal organization contributes to each opera’s unique sound-​world—​or, to use Verdi’s term, its tinta musicale.19

19 The term comes from Verdi’s letter of 24 August 1850 to Carlo Marzari, protesting the censorship of Piave’s libretto for Rigoletto. Verdi, Copialettere, 106–​7.

C HA P T E R

Twelve

Ernani to Attila (1844–​1846)

This chapter examines one complete opera, Ernani, and complete parts of two others. I do not claim that act 3 of Giovanna d’Arco or the prologue from Attila are typical; they are not. For one thing, both begin and end in the same key, something that is true of no other act in either opera (in Ernani it is true only of act 2). I have chosen these acts precisely because they seem unusually self-​contained. I argue below, following Harold Powers, that act 3 of Giovanna d’Arco constitutes a single super-​number both formally and tonally, although Verdi’s score distinguishes three numbers. The same cannot be said of the Attila prologue. But that prologue’s musical structure includes the opera’s Preludio, just one of the ways in which it shows the imprint of Haydn’s Creation and, in turn, anticipates Rigoletto. Although my analysis of Ernani stands on its own, it is also intended to prepare the analysis of Il trovatore in ­chapter 13. Many listeners have noticed a relation between these operas. Similarly, the analysis of the Attila prologue in this chapter may be compared to that of the Simon Boccanegra prologue in ­chapter 14. The analysis of Giovanna d’Arco, act 3, relates to analyses of large-​scale numbers and complete acts in earlier chapters. The idea of the super-​number returns in my discussion of Un ballo in maschera in c­ hapter 14.

Ernani Verdi composed Ernani for Venice’s Teatro La Fenice, where it premiered in March 1844. The libretto is by Francesco Maria Piave (1810–​1876), who would become Verdi’s principal librettist. Based on Victor Hugo’s Hernani, a landmark of French Romanticism, the opera features not a love triangle but a love quartet. Three men are in love with Elvira: Ernani (tenor), the high-​born bandit whose love Elvira returns; Carlo (baritone), King of Spain, who during the opera becomes Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor; and Don Ruy Gomez de Silva (bass), Elvira’s elderly uncle, to whom she is betrothed against her will. The drama turns on an oath sworn by Ernani to Silva, who has saved his life: Silva may reclaim his gift at any time by blowing his hunting horn within Ernani’s hearing. At the opera’s end, Silva does this on the very day that Ernani is to wed Elvira. Valuing his honor above all, Ernani obediently commits suicide, leaving Elvira in despair. Like many of Verdi’s early operas, Ernani is divided into four “parts” or acts. The titles of acts 1–​3 refer to each of the three men in turn. Il Bandito (“The The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0013

412  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.1.  Verdi, Ernani, act 1, Cavatina Elvira, mm. 31–​32

Bandit”) is, of course, Ernani. L’Ospite (“The Host”) is Silva, whose castle and grounds provide the setting for acts 1 and 2. La Clemenza (“Clemency”) is dispensed by Carlo in his role as Emperor. Act 4, La Maschera (“The Masquerade”), provides the denouement at the castle of Don Juan of Aragon, the nobleman Ernani has revealed himself to be. Both Ernani and Verdi’s next opera, I due Foscari, show Verdi attempting to unify his operas through the use of recurring motives. In Foscari this is done in an unsubtle way, associating fully shaped themes with specific characters.1 In Ernani, melodic recurrences involve short motives and gestures that might easily pass unnoticed, even as they lend consistency to the opera’s tinta musicale. Julian Budden and Roger Parker have traced the use of a characteristic melodic interval, the ascending sixth, throughout Ernani. The leap of a sixth tends to mark the beginning of a musical strain, and it occurs from 5̂ of the local key to 3̂, usually in major. Basevi writes of Elvira’s “Ernani involami” (example 12.1) that, “because of certain remarkable leaps, its beautiful melody smacks somewhat of German music, specifically dance music.”2 Parker adds a second recurring motive, the Le–​ Sol–​Fi–​Sol pattern that Vasili Byros has highlighted in music of the Viennese Classics.3 A third recurring motive seems to have gone unremarked in the literature. It is the ascending tetrachord in major or melodic minor, 5̂–​(♯)6̂–​(♯)7̂–8̂. This motive is most prominent in the final trio, but it is foreshadowed earlier. Example 12.2 shows a few instances; all but the first are complete. Basevi remarks of the melodies in Ernani that “they are composed for the most part of ascending patterns of notes. . . . [A]‌s noted by [André] Grétry, ascending phrases are characteristic of the young and descending ones of weary spirits.”4 The ascending tetrachord is heard especially in music for the young lovers, Ernani and Elvira. Table 12.1 shows the keys in which the opera’s Preludio and each of its fourteen numbers end. Without exception, each number ends in a major key. Seven numbers, fully half the total, end in either B♭ major or E♭ major. Only three numbers end in sharp keys, but the final trio is one of them: the opera ends in G major. 1 On types of melodic recurrence in Verdi’s operas, see Joseph Kerman, “Verdi’s Use of Recurring Themes,” in Kerman, Write All These Down: Essays on Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 274–​87. This essay originally appeared in Harold S. Powers, ed., Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 495–​510. 2 Basevi, The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, 48. 3 Roger Parker, “Levels of Melodic Definition in Verdi’s Ernani,” 19th-​Century Music 6 (1982): 141–​50. On the Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol schema, see ­chapter 6. 4 Basevi, Operas, 56. The reference to Grétry is to his Mémoires (Paris, 1789).

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  413 Example 12.2.  The 5̂–6̂–7̂–8̂ motive in Ernani

a. Act 1, Duetto indi Terzetto, mm. 133–​36 b. The same, mm. 295–​99 c. Act 4, Terzetto finale, mm. 267–​68 d. The same, mm. 274–​76 Table 12.2 adds some complicating details. Keys in square brackets represent orchestral preludes that precede a number’s scena. Keys in curly brackets denote the principal keys of kinetic movements—​tempi d’attacco and tempi di mezzo. Kinetic movements that fail to settle into a stable key are not represented; scene, too, are omitted. Keys not surrounded by brackets represent pezzi chiusi—​slow movements, cabalettas, and choruses. Where no kinetic movement is represented between pezzi chiusi, a vertical line appears in the figure. Even with this more detailed representation, act 1 exhibits a remarkable preponderance of a single key, B♭ major. Spending so much time in a single key is unusual for Verdi. B♭ major dominates nos. 2–​4, the act’s central portion. No fewer than four pezzi in act 1 are heard in this key: Ernani’s cabaletta, Elvira’s primo tempo (“Ernani, involami”), her cabaletta, and the slow movement of the Elvira–​ Carlo duet. All are static movements, and all speak of love either for or by Elvira. Placing these pezzi in the same key in act 1, an act of exposition, has the effect of

414  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 12.1.  Ernani: Keys in which numbers end Preludio

C ACT I

No. 1. Introduzione

F

No. 2. Cavatina Ernani

B♭

No. 3. Cavatina Elvira No. 4. Duetto indi Terzetto (Elvira, Carlo, later Ernani) No. 5. Finale I

B♭ C

A ACT II E♭

No. 6. Introduzione II

B♭

No. 7. Terzetto (Elvira, Ernani, Silva)

B♭

No. 8. Aria Carlo No. 9. Duetto (Ernani, Silva) ACT III

E♭

A♭

No. 10. Scena Carlo No. 11. Congiura

B

No. 12. Finale III

F ACT IV

No. 13. Festa da Ballo No. 14. Terzetto finale (Elvira, Ernani, later Silva)

E♭ G

equalizing the three principals, minimizing their differences and separating them all from the elderly Silva, who will sing of his love in a more remote key, A♭ major. Although this is the first act of four, it ends with a dramatic tangle more typical of a central finale. In no. 4 (Duetto indi Terzetto), Carlo woos the unwilling Elvira in Silva’s castle when Ernani appears for a rendezvous with his beloved. The two men—​sworn enemies who are meeting for the first time—​confront each other menacingly. No. 5 (Finale) begins with the untimely return of Silva, who challenges both younger men to fight. Carlo saves the day by revealing his identity, something that Ernani will not do until act 3. Carlo enlists Silva’s support in his bid to become Emperor and announces that he will stay the night—​a great honor for Silva. Carlo then extricates Ernani from the situation by ordering this “loyal” subject to depart. Ernani, who is anything but loyal to his king, can only express frustration. The stretta of no. 4 is in C major, the key of the Preludio and of the primo tempo in Ernani’s cavatina (no. 2). In his cavatina, Ernani feared that Silva would rob him

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  415 Table 12.2.  Ernani: Principal keys of numbers Preludio

c→C ACT I

No. 1. Introduzione

F

No. 2. Cavatina Ernani

C | B♭

[E♭] B♭ {d→D} B♭

No. 3. Cavatina Elvira

[C]‌ {D♭} B♭→b♭→B♭ {f} C

No. 4. Duetto indi Terzetto attacca subito il Finale No. 5. Finale I ACT II

E♭

No. 6. Introduzione II

C | G | b♭→B♭

No. 7. Terzetto

[C]‌A {f♯→d→F→f→F} B♭

No. 8. Aria Carlo No. 9. Duetto ACT III No. 11. Congiura

b→G→B

No. 12. Finale III ACT IV No. 14. Terzetto finale

{E♭→f→B♭} E♭ [c]‌ A♭

No. 10. Scena Carlo

No. 13. Festa da Ballo

A♭ {f} E♭ {g→G} a→A

{A♭} f→F E♭

{c→A♭} d→D {b→B} G

of Elvira; in the duet-​cum-​trio, he is scorned by Carlo. Both times, C major is associated with Ernani’s alienation from the aristocratic society into which he was born. As it often does for Verdi, C major functions as a “hard” key within a context that is biased toward the “soft,” flat side of the spectrum. The finale (no. 5) traces a motion from the four-​flat system (A♭ major) to three flats (E♭ major) to two flats (G minor). The music moves into sharp territory when G minor is transformed into its parallel, G major. The shift from flats to sharps accompanies Carlo’s sotto voce address to Silva, which defuses the tension and prevents bloodshed. The final stretta, sung by all present, concludes the act in a blaze of A-​major praise to the king. The act thus ends at the opposite end of the tonal spectrum from Silva’s A♭-​major expression of self-​pity at the finale’s opening. Verdi would later employ a similar progression in the first-​act finale of Un ballo in maschera, which begins with Ulrica’s C-​minor invocation to the King of Hell (Re

416  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera dell’abisso) and ends with an A-​major hymn of praise to the King of Sweden (demoted, in the opera’s final version, to the Governor of Boston). The first act’s fixation on B♭ major is matched by Elvira’s fixation on the note F, that key’s fifth degree—​ more precisely, on the octave F4–​ F5. Example 12.1 provided one illustration; example 12.3 shows several others. Most of these passages are in B♭ major or minor, but one (12.3b) is in D♭ major. The combination of fixed melodic pitch and variable key is practically the definition of a sonorità, and Elvira’s F–​F octave acts as an extension of the concept. Carlo is repeatedly drawn into Elvira’s melodic obsession; the most striking example marks the final moments of their tempo d’attacco (example 12.4). The two share a descent through the octave F4–​ F3, subdivided at the fifth, C4. F4, unaccompanied, is passed from Carlo to Elvira—​the pitch lies high in his range, rather low in hers—​underscoring a moment of dramatic electricity: the king has just referred to the absent Ernani, whom he knows to be Elvira’s beloved.5 A different sonorità, C4, characterizes Silva in acts 1–​2. By the end of act 2, Silva has drawn Ernani into his power just as surely as Elvira has drawn Carlo into hers. In both cases, the changing power dynamic is reflected in the transfer of a sonorità from one character to another. Silva’s first appearance in the opera is his sudden entrance at the beginning of no. 5. He begins immediately to recite on C4, beginning with the leap of an octave downward (example 12.5). The key is initially C major. Silva resumes C4 once his A♭-​major cantabile has yielded to the tempo di mezzo, which is primarily in F minor (see example 12.6). C4 acts as Kopfton of Silva’s fundamental line, 3̂–2̂–1̂ in A♭, but emphasis on C4 is less here than in the surrounding declamatory passages. C is common to the tonic triads of C major, A♭ major, and F minor, and to the dominant of F as well. In act 2, Silva, “dressed pompously as a grandee of Spain” according to the libretto, resumes his octave-​leaping ways, underscoring the immobility of his character (example 12.7). Because Silva is technically a comprimario role—​he has no formal aria—​Verdi composed Silva without a specific singer in mind. In the end he agreed to Antonio Selva, who at nineteen was younger than any of the principals.6 In the tempo di mezzo of no. 8, the king’s men, seeking Ernani in Silva’s castle, report that he is nowhere to be found (Silva has concealed him behind a portrait). Carlo then demands that Silva yield up a hostage, either the outlaw or Elvira. The king addresses Silva on Silva’s own pitch, C4, and the old man refuses him in like manner (example 12.8). Silva embellishes his C with the familiar Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol double-​neighbor figure (mm. 179–​81), preparing the F minor of his plea to Carlo (not shown). Once Carlo and his men have left with Elvira, Ernani emerges from hiding and informs Silva of Carlo’s amorous designs on his fiancée. Silva, his honor again imperiled, responds with a call to arms that centers on C4, again embellished with In the C-​major stretta of no. 4, after Ernani has turned the duet into a trio, there is strong vocal emphasis on the octave E4–​E5. 6 Gossett, “The Composition of Ernani,” in Analyzing Opera, ed. Abbate and Parker, 27–​55; 44–​49. 5

Example 12.3.  Elvira’s octave (F–​F) in act 1

a. Cavatina Elvira, mm. 122–​24 b. Duetto indi Terzetto, mm. 39–​41 c. The same, mm. 53–​55 d. The same, mm. 85–​86

418  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.4.  Duetto indi Terzetto, mm. 56–​66

Example 12.5.  Act 1, Finale, mm. 1–​4

the Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol figure (example 12.9). This leads directly to Ernani’s fatal oath, which he sings mostly on C4 (example 12.10). Ernani has fallen into Silva’s trap. Although the curtain will be lowered in the key of E♭ major, C4 has become an aural token of Silva’s character, the oppressive atmosphere of his castle, and the fatalism that Ernani and Carlo both wish to escape.

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  419 Example 12.6.  The same, mm. 52–​54

Example 12.7.  Act 2, Recitativo e Terzetto, mm. 9–​10

When they do not concern love, solo pezzi for Ernani and Carlo in acts 1–​2 are placed in “hard” keys. These include the C major of Ernani’s primo tempo in no. 2, his C-​major lyric form in the tempo d’attacco of no. 7, and the A major of Carlo’s primo tempo in no. 8. Carlo’s cabaletta, where his rage at Ernani and Silva turns to renewed love for Elvira, returns to B♭ major, the key in which he expressed his love in act 1. Act 3 is set at Charlemagne’s tomb. Far more than the preceding acts, this one is dominated by a single character: Carlo. Act 3 marks not only his elevation to Emperor but his maturation to rational self-​control. By its end of the act he has unmasked the conspirators, pardoned them (at Elvira’s urging), and blessed the union of Elvira with Don Juan of Aragon, aka Ernani. In a superb essay on this act,7 Fabrizio Della Seta quotes Gabriele Baldini: “Here in Act III of Ernani we have the first complete, broad-​based entity in Verdi’s music drama,” “a perfect structural unit.”8 Della Seta’s portrayal of the act’s tonal plan is

Fabrizio Della Seta, “Ernani: The ‘Carlo Quinto’ Act,” in Not without Madness: Perspectives on Opera, trans. Mark Weir (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 24–​37. The essay originally appeared, in Italian, in Pierluigi Petrobelli, ed., Ernani ieri e oggi (Parma: Istituto di Studi Verdiani, 1987), 161–​75. 7

8 Gabriele Baldini, The Story of Giuseppe Verdi, trans. Roger Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 83–​84.

420  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.8.  Aria Carlo, mm. 169–​86

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  421 Example 12.8.  Continued

Example 12.9.  Duetto Ernani–​Silva, mm. 59–​71: Silva’s vocal line

shown in example 12.11, where “[w]‌hole notes designate the most important tonal centers, in relation to their duration; quarter notes are less important local centers; eighth notes represent a dominant function, sometimes a prolonged one.”9 Thus, wherever an eighth note appears in the graph, the third above it is always major;

Della Seta, Not without Madness, 234n14. 9

422  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.10.  The same, mm. 73–​79: Ernani’s oath

Example 12.11.  Della Seta’s diagram of act 3 (Not without Madness, p. 31, ex. 2.2)*

* from Fabrizio Della Seta, Not without Madness: Perspectives on Opera, translated by Mark Weir. © 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Used by permission of University of Chicago Press. the fifth above any bass note is perfect. The notation of Della Seta’s graph is similar to that of many bass-​line sketches in this book. Della Seta divides the act in two different ways. For dramatic purposes he divides it in two, with no. 10 as the first unit (Carlo alone), nos. 11–​12 as the second (first the conspirators; then Carlo with the conspirators, the Electors, Elvira, and others). On musical grounds he divides the act in three, corresponding to its three numbers, but he links nos. 10 and 12 as hinging upon the tonal pairing F minor/​A♭ major, which he conceives as an opposition. Ernani darkens A♭ major to A♭ minor briefly when he reveals himself as a nobleman and demands to be

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  423 executed with the other noble conspirators. The final resolution to F major, marking the king’s act of pardon, “comes as a deus ex machina.”10 The musical gesture is reminiscent of the similar move in Meyerbeer’s “Robert, toi que j’aime” (Robert le diable, act 4), described in c­ hapter 10. It also completes what this book has described as a trio of keys, the conjoining of a minor key—​here F minor—​with its relative and parallel majors. The tonal spectrum of nos. 10 and 12 extends from Ernani’s A♭ minor (seven flats), through the relative keys A♭ major and F minor (four flats), to the closing F major (one flat). Della Seta’s analysis calls upon both relative and parallel major-​ minor pairings, but he rightly treats the four-​flat system as central. Whether F minor and A♭ major should be regarded as opposed, as Della Seta believes, or as complementary is an interesting question; I am inclined to understand the keys as complementary. If one were to continue the chaining of parallel and relative keys—​ in neo-​Riemannian terms, the alternation of P and R—​from the flat extreme of A♭ minor, the next key would be C♭ major, A♭ minor’s relative and enharmonically equivalent to B major, the key in which no. 11 ends. Next in the chain would come B minor, the key in which no. 11 begins. The act’s three principal tonics—​F, A♭, and B—​are separated by minor thirds, and each tonic appears in both modes. This pattern of keys fits the chart of key relations that was published in 1817 by Gottfried Weber, who, like his friend Meyerbeer, was a pupil of Vogler.11 I have no reason to believe that Verdi ever saw Weber’s chart, which is reproduced in table 12.3. Verdi’s chain of keys may be found in the third row from the bottom, the row that begins, at the left extreme, with h (B minor). Weber’s chart suggests that D major and D minor belong to the same chain of minor-​third-​related keys. D minor makes a brief appearance in act 1, but D major is absent from the opera until the final trio (no. 14), where it is the basis of that number’s longest and most static movement. Example 12.12 shows the key scheme of the final trio as a series of tonic triads, beginning with C minor and ending with G major. The introductory scena is omitted. The scheme descends in thirds throughout. The four interior tonics form the minor-​third cycle A♭–​F–​D–​B, or C32, the same cycle invoked in act 3. I am not certain of the dramatic significance of this harmonic link between acts 3 and 4, but the link exists. In his analysis of act 3, Della Seta focuses on C major as a dominant-​functioning chord that resolves variously to the tonics of F minor, F major, A♭ major, and D♭ major. While the malleability of the C major triad is real, I prefer to focus on C as a sonorità. C is the only pitch-​class common to all tonic triads in the trio of keys A♭/​f/​F and, in addition, to the C minor of the act’s prelude. The pitch C4 is noteworthy, in part, because of its identification with Silva in acts 1–​2. Significantly, in the act that demonstrates Carlo’s newfound maturity, the king appropriates the older man’s sonorità and makes it his own. He even adopts Silva’s manner of leaping the octave from C4 to C3. Perhaps as a result, Silva adopts a new sonorità in act 3—​B3, a semitone below Carlo’s C4 (Silva is the older man). B is common to the three principal keys in no. 11: B minor, G major, and B major. In act 4 it will be 10 Della Seta, Not without Madness, 37. 11 See c­ hapter 10.

Table 12.3. Weber, Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst, 1st ed. (1817): Chart of key relationships

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  425 Example 12.12.  Ernani, Terzetto finale: Tonal plan as a series of tonic triads

Example 12.13.  Ernani, act 3: C4 as sonorità for Carlo

a. Scena Carlo, mm. 25–​26 and 32–​33 b. The same, mm. 44–​46 c. The same, mm. 69–​71 d. Finale, m. 109 (vocal line only) Ernani who recites on B3, while the horn that hunts him down intones on B4. Example 12.13 shows several moments in act 3 in which Carlo exercises his sonorità of C4; Example 12.14 shows two passages in which Silva declaims on B3. 12.14b incorporates both falling octaves, B3–​B2 and C4–​C3. Act 4 consists of two numbers. Like act 2, it begins with a celebratory chorus in E♭ major accompanied by the banda (stage band). On both occasions, the chorus sings of Elvira’s imminent wedding—​to Silva in act 2, to Ernani in act 4. The identity of key may have been motivated by the presence of the banda, but it intensifies the parallels between the two choruses and their dramatic situations. In

426  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.14.  Ernani, act 3: B3 as sonorità for Silva

a. Congiura, mm. 36–​37 b. The same, mm. 56–​61 (Silva’s line only) act 2, the chorus reinforces the centrality of the three-​and two-​flat systems: nos. 6 and 9 end in E♭ major, nos. 7 and 8 in B♭ major. In act 4 the chorus modulates more widely, including episodes in C minor (three flats) and F minor (four flats); E♭ major is colored with accidentals borrowed from E♭ minor (six flats). The darker, flatter harmony of no. 13—​which also moves at a slower tempo—​sets in relief the harmonic arc of the trio, which moves, like the act as a whole, from the three-​flat to the one-​sharp system. Following a lengthy scena, the trio divides into five movements, listed in table 12.4. Headings of movements are my own. Although the final movement is slow, like the slow cabaletta that ends Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, one easily glimpses the outlines of la solita forma. The overall key scheme of the trio was shown in table 12.2 and example 12.12. Once it has left the E♭ major of the chorus, the scena circles around the harmony of C major, almost in the manner described by Della Seta for act 3. C major appears alternately as tonic, in music first heard in the opera’s Preludio, and as f:VA. A decisive move to the sharp side occurs with the first appearance of G major, as

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  427 Table 12.4.  Ernani, act 4, Terzetto finale Tempo d’attacco, part 1: Allegro assai moderato,  (Ernani)

c→A♭

Slow movement: Andante assai mosso,  (Elvira, later all three)

d→D

Tempo d’attacco, part 2: Allegro assai mosso,  (Ernani, Silva, then Elvira) f:VA→F→d:VA Tempo di mezzo: After a quotation of Ernani’s oath, Allegro risoluto,  Stretta: Adagio, 

b→B→e:VA G

Ernani and Elvira pledge eternal love. Their unaccompanied cadence, a Bellinian gesture, coincides with the first sounding of Silva’s horn (example 12.15). From here the scena remains on the sharp side of the spectrum. Sharp keys accommodate the B sonorità in multiple ways: as 3̂ of G major; as 5̂ of E minor or E major; as 1̂ of B minor or B major; and as 2̂ of A minor—​more precisely, as the fifth of a dominantized E major triad, as in the first passage in example 12.16.12 In the main body of the trio, the process of moving the sonorità from C4 to B3, already carried out in act 3, is recapitulated. The tempo d’attacco is dominated by keys that include C in their tonic triads: c, A♭, f, and F. The tempo di mezzo and stretta are dominated by keys that accommodate B; these are the same keys that were heard in no. 11, where the shift of sonorità first occurred. The ardency of the young lovers is captured by their repeated use of the 5̂–6̂–7̂–8̂ motive, shown earlier (example 12.2). The music of Ernani shows an assuredness and consistency of tone that is not matched by Verdi’s earlier operas. In addition to recurring motives and key relations, the opera exhibits a conservative approach to form that is broken only by the final trio. More perhaps than any other Verdi opera, Ernani is saturated with lyric forms; I have counted seventeen. Most are relatively straightforward, but Carlo’s maturation in act 3 is marked, fittingly enough, by two that are more flexible. One of these—​his cantabile “O sommo Carlo” in the finale (no. 12)—​ begins normally, but the closing phrase, “A Carlo Magno sia gloria e onor,” is sung by the chorus. More elusive is Carlo’s cantabile “O de’ verd’anni miei” in no. 10 (example 12.17). For this piece Piave provided ten settenari, of which only the eighth and tenth are versi tronchi, the type most conducive to perfect authentic cadences. In Verdi’s setting, the first two phrases end with PACs despite the piano line-​endings; yet the two cadences are unequal, and a period is formed. The cadence in m. 76 has an overhang marked stentate (“labored”). This marking suggests that the sixteenth notes are melodically essential, not an embellishment of the tonic note; they bring back C4, which acts as both Kopfton and sonorità. The cadence in m. 80 is more conventional and more final, though still less final than the tronco cadences in

12 The E major harmony arrives in m. 64 as a:VA (half cadence). By mm. 75–​77 E sounds like a tonic, but it soon becomes A:VA, leading to a PAC in that key in m. 87.

428  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.15.  Terzetto finale, mm. 25–​29

mm. 92 and 96. The leggerissimo embellishment in m. 78 surrounds D♭, the ubiquitous upper neighbor to C. The lyric form’s B phrase (mm. 81–​84) is subdivided, characteristically, into two-​measure halves. The phrase ends on f:V, another emphasized C major triad (it does not appear in Della Seta’s graph); this leads back to A♭:I. Phrase 4 begins as an exact repetition of phrase 2, but its final measure leads back to f:V (C major again) instead of A♭:I. The form is not complete at this point. A fifth phrase, mm. 89–​92, sets the grandiose words of the concluding couplet (“My name will conquer the centuries”) and leads to the first tronco cadence by way of F4, the highest vocal pitch so far. Yet phrase 5 makes a relatively weak ending: the phrase is subdivided 2 +​2 in the manner of a B phrase, each of its halves executing the same harmonic progression, V7–​I; a harmony of pre-​dominant function is lacking. Orchestration also undercuts the cadence: trombones and cimbasso drop out on the downbeat of m. 92 as the lower strings change suddenly to a piano dynamic. The sixth phrase, mm. 93–​96, is the true closing phrase. Although its text repeats that of the previous phrase—​usually a sign of coda function—​its harmonic progression and bass motion are far more conclusive, and they include a climactic pre-​dominant in the

Example 12.16.  Terzetto finale: B as sonorità

a. mm. 72–​77 (B is fifth of E major) b. mm. 104–​7 (B is root of B major and third of G major) c. mm. 256–​64 (similar to 12.16b)

430  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.17.  Scena Carlo, “O de’ verd’anni miei” (lyric form)

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  431 Example 12.17.  Continued

432  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.17.  Continued

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  433 Example 12.17.  Continued

second half of m. 94. The horns in mm. 95–​96 reinforce the Urlinie descent, 3̂–2̂–1̂ in A♭ major.

Giovanna d’Arco, Act 3 Giovanna d’Arco (Joan of Arc) was composed for La Scala in 1844 and 1845, one year after Ernani. The libretto, which is loosely based on Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans, is by Temistocle Solera, who had supplied the libretti of Oberto, Nabucco, and I Lombardi. I follow Verdi’s autograph and the critical edition in considering Giovanna d’Arco an opera in four acts—​not, as Solera conceived it, three acts plus a prologue.

434  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 12.5. Verdi, Giovanna d’Arco, act 3 No. 11. Marcia. E♭

Includes episodes in B♭ (VT) and A♭ (IVT)

No. 12. Scena ed Aria Giacomo. E♭→f♯→F♯ Scena: E♭→d♭

Adagio: f♯→F♯

Attacca subito Finale No. 13. Finale Terzo. E♭→F→D♭→E♭ Coro: E♭

Recitativo: E♭→b♭

Allegro (tempo d’attacco?): b♭→E♭→f:VA Moderato (cabaletta Giacomo): F Transition: f→d♭:VA

Andante (concertato): D♭

Allegro moderato (tempo di mezzo): b♭→e♭:VA Allegro (stretta): e♭→E♭

Act 3 comprises a single scene, the coronation of Charles VII in the cathedral square at Reims. Giacomo, Giovanna’s father, is in the crowd and denounces her publicly; he has already betrayed her to the English. Dramatically, the act resembles the coronation scene in Meyerbeer’s Le prophète, with Giacomo filling the parental role played in that opera by Fidès. Although Verdi attended the premiere of Le prophète and admired the coronation scene, Giovanna d’Arco was written half a decade earlier. The clash of private and public interests in a massive crowd scene is a staple of grand opéra, from which genre Giovanna d’Arco partly derives. Table 12.5 outlines the act’s three numbers. Unusually for Verdi, the act begins and ends in the same key, E♭ major. This fact might be attributed to the participation of the banda and of brass instruments in general, but the repeated returns to E♭ are not difficult to hear, and they lend the music a certain coherence. This coherence has other sources as well. The two numbers that follow the march, Giacomo’s aria (no. 12) and the finale (no. 13), are explicitly linked by Verdi’s instruction Attacca subito Finale. Furthermore, as Julian Budden and Harold Powers have pointed out, the cabaletta of Giacomo’s aria seems to be deferred until the middle of the finale.13 13 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:218; Powers, “‘La solita forma’ and ‘The Uses of Convention,’” Acta musicologica 59 (1987): 65–​90; 73–​74.

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  435 Table 12.6.  Powers’s diagram of Giovanna d’Arco, act 3*

* from Harold S. Powers, “ ‘La solita forma’ and “The Uses of Convention,” Acta musicologica 59, no. 1 (January–​April 1987), 65–​90; Table II, p. 74. Used by permission of the International Musicological Society, publishers of Acta musicologica.

This cabaletta does not take the usual form (it is not repeated), but it sounds like a cabaletta in most other respects. Table 12.6 reproduces Powers’s diagram of the act.14 He claims that the music beginning with the offstage chorus functions as tempo di mezzo and cabaletta of Giacomo’s aria while simultaneously constituting part of the finale’s introductory chorus and all of its tempo d’attacco. If the opening Marcia (no. 11) is included, the entire act might be understood—​as Powers suggests—​as a single number, a gigantic finale (see the rightmost column in table 12.6). Example 12.18 offers a bass-​line sketch of the act. For the most part, I have adopted Della Seta’s notation from example 12.11. Whole notes represent tonics of lengthy duration; quarter notes are tonics of brief duration; eighth notes are dominants of any duration. Where a quarter note is tied to an eighth note, a triad begins as a tonic and becomes an active dominant. Where an eighth note is tied to a quarter note, an active dominant is reinterpreted as a tonic. Because of its closer

14 Powers numbers the acts according to Solera’s libretto.

436  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.18.  Giovanna d’Arco, act 3: Bass-​line reduction

relation to E♭ major, I have re-​notated the F♯ tonic of Giacomo’s aria as G♭ (more on this below). All Roman numerals in the example are upper-case. I have added a few symbols not used by Della Seta. A sixteenth note represents the leading tone of a local key. Filled note heads without stems represent passing or neighboring chords; figured-​bass numerals specify pitch-​classes above the bass. Slurs connect the beginnings and ends of stepwise bass motions, either passing or neighboring. Horizontal beams indicate arpeggiations that take the form III–​V–​I, a pattern that occurs frequently in this act. Short diagonal lines highlight bass motions by descending fifth or ascending fourth; these are not always dominant-​ to-​tonic resolutions. Example 12.19 reduces the bass line further. The resulting harmonic framework is based on regular tonic-​dominant relations except for the G♭ of Giacomo’s cantabile and the D♭ of the finale’s concertato. These keys are built on ♭III and ♭VII, respectively, of E♭ major, relating to that key through its parallel minor. If the “soft” keys of G♭ and D♭ were removed, a straightforward progression in E♭ would remain, I–​II–​V–​I. G♭ major seems to represent Giacomo’s wish that Giovanna avoid damnation; her D♭ major expresses her desire that Heaven’s will be done. Both lie, tonally and dramatically, beyond the pomp of the banda and its key of E♭ major. Spelling Giacomo’s F♯ as G♭ also reflects the ways in which this tonic is approached and left. As shown in example 12.18, E♭ major moves to G♭ minor

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  437 Example 12.19.  A further reduction of ­example 12.18

through D♭ minor (scena of no. 12), which turns into g♭:VA when its third is raised from F♭ to F♮ (beginning of the aria). At Verdi’s attacca subito Finale (see the full score in example 12.20), the notated A♯4 in the first oboe and first violins, F♯:3̂, is transformed into E♭:5̂ (first trumpet) as the bass leaps from one tonic to the next by the perceived interval of a minor third, G♭–​E♭. The various III–​V–​I motions that are noted in example 12.18 involve similar reinterpretations of a single pitch. If F♯ is understood as G♭, the act is seen to lie almost entirely on the flat side of the spectrum. The “hardest” key to receive cadential confirmation in example 12.18 is the F major of Giacomo’s cabaletta, where he accuses his daughter of blasphemy and witchcraft. Not shown in that example is a C-​major cadence in the preceding Allegro, where the King declares to Giovanna, “I prostrate myself before you who were sent by Heaven” (example 12.21). Carlo’s I . . . III♯–​V–​I progression, which touches on the sharp harmony of E major, is accompanied by a halo of slowly moving string chords—​this in a movement that is otherwise heavily scored and rhythmically active. It is a striking moment. The King is enamored of PACs and 3̂–2̂–1̂ descents; they suit the grandeur of his pronouncements. Fourteen measures after the cadence just quoted, he proclaims to Giovanna, “Divine maiden, you will have a church [built in your honor].”15 His line is accompanied by a PAC in E♭ major, complete with 3̂–2̂–1̂ descent in vocal line and violins (example 12.22). This cadence is shown in square brackets in example 12.18, second system. Had Carlo’s second cadence been allowed to stand, full closure in the act’s central key would have been achieved. The act could then have ended with a short chorus of praise and a flourish of trumpets—​ in E♭ major, of course. But this is precisely the moment when Giacomo steps forward with his accusation. He resumes the diminished-​seventh chord on B♮ that preceded the C-​major cadence (see the asterisks in example 12.18). At the same time he resumes and continues the bass’s chromatic ascent, which had already led from G♮ to C♭. Having turned C♭ into B♮, he resolves to a C major that is no longer a tonic but an active dominant of F minor. His F-​major cabaletta follows. The flattest keys in act 3 belong to the nine-​flat system—​the G♭ minor that opens Giacomo’s aria and its relative or mediant, B♭♭ major, to which his lyric form moves in its B phrase. B♭♭ forms part of another I–​III–​V–​I progression, as shown in example 12.18, first system. Giacomo returns to his tonic for phrase 4, but it is the tonic major, represented in the score by a change of signature from three

15 Italian censors would not allow the word “church” in an opera libretto, so “temple” (tempio) was used instead. This is true even in Verdi’s Stiffelio (1850), where the “temple” is Protestant.

Example 12.20.  Act 3: Link from no. 12 to no. 13

Example 12.21.  Act 3, Finale, mm. 56–​60

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  439 Example 12.22.  Finale, mm. 72–​74 (Giacomo’s entrance omitted)

sharps to six. Owing in part to this change of mode, phrase 4 has the quality of a new beginning. It proves to be the presentation phrase of a ten-​measure sentence, expanded from the usual eight measures by means of a deceptive cadence. This aria represents a type highlighted by Giorgio Pagannone and discussed in ­chapter 5: a minor-​mode lyric form that breaks into a major key at the beginning of its closing phrase. Giacomo’s phrase 4 far exceeds the normal length of a closing phrase (four measures) and turns into a full-​blown sentence (ten measures). In a fascinating study, Frits Noske cites the finale of act 3 as the first of Verdi’s ritual scenes, a scene-​type that Noske traces back to the tragédie lyrique of Rameau and Gluck.16 Ritual scenes appear in several of Verdi’s operas of the 1840s and again in his last operas, most famously Aida. A ritual scene involves an appeal to supernatural powers, a priest or other interlocutor with the divine, and a human subject whose future is in doubt. Musically, it involves a thrice-​repeated incantation, which in most cases rises in pitch with each repetition. In Giovanna d’Arco, the ritual is the public trial of Giovanna by Giacomo, who three times asks whether she is still a virgin (in the original libretto) or if she has committed a sacrilege (in the censored text). She remains silent, like Radamès in Aida, and her silence, like his, is interpreted as guilt. After Giacomo’s third question, the proceedings are interrupted by thunder and lightning, like the royal wedding in Semiramide. The people, convinced that Giovanna is a witch, denounce her in the stretta (the trial itself occurs in the tempo di mezzo). Example 12.23, which is reproduced from Noske’s essay, gives the vocal line of the three questions and the people’s reactions. Giacomo’s line forms a chromatic ascent articulated into three semitones: B♭–​C♭, C♭–​C♮, and C–​D♭. All of these notes except D♭ are also harmonic roots; the climactic D♭ is accompanied by a diminished-​ seventh chord on G♮. The corresponding passage is bracketed in example 12.18, which reduces the progression to a mostly stepwise bass line. Example 12.19 shows that the entire tempo di mezzo prolongs the bass note B♭, which begins as b♭:i and ends as E♭:VA.

16 Frits Noske, “Ritual Scenes in Verdi’s Operas,” Music and Letters 54 (1973): 415–​39; rept. in Noske, The Signifier and the Signified (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 241–​70.

440  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.23.  Finale, 207–​29, vocal lines only (from Noske, The Signifier and the Signified)*

* from Frits Noske, The Signifier and the Signified: Studies in the Operas of Mozart and Verdi. Copyright © Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands, 1977. Paperback edition © Oxford University Press, 1990. Page 244. Reproduced with permission of Oxford University Press through PLSclear. Chromatic ascents like this occur often in Verdi’s operas. In his writings on Wagner, Robert Bailey coined the term expressive tonality to describe a series of keys that ascends chromatically. Bailey identified the diegetic song “Dir töne Lob’,” from act 1 of Tannhäuser, as Wagner’s first use of the device; that opera dates from

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  441 1845, the same year as Giovanna d’Arco.17 Tannhäuser sings his song to Venus three times, in the keys of D♭, D, and E♭ respectively, with other material intervening between statements. The song’s main section is in lyric form. Despite the difference in scale, the sense of increasing urgency is similar in both operas.

Attila, Prologue Verdi composed Attila for Venice’s La Fenice, the same theater for which he had written Ernani. The libretto was begun by Solera and completed by Piave. It was Solera’s last libretto for Verdi, who was angered by the poet’s inability to finish the work on time. Composition occupied the fall and winter of 1845–​1846. Like all of Verdi’s Venetian operas—​which include Rigoletto, La traviata, and the first version of Simon Boccanegra—​Attila was premiered in March, toward the end of the traditional operatic season. Attila portrays the Huns’ attempt to conquer Italy in ad 452. The style of the opera is grandiose in the manner of Nabucco and I Lombardi. Verdi may have been tiring of this manner: he and Piave rejected Solera’s plan for a choral finale, substituting a quartet of the principal characters. Verdi also refused to use a banda, although he used it often thereafter. The opera comprises a prologue and three acts. The prologue is set partly in Roman Aquileia, which Attila has just sacked, and partly on the site of the future city of Venice, some distance to the west. The three acts that follow tell of Attila’s failed campaign in central Italy and his death at the hand of the Aquileian princess Odabella. The other principals are Ezio, a Roman general, and Foresto, an Aquileian warrior. Here, slightly abridged, is Roger Parker’s synopsis of the prologue’s two scenes: The piazza of Aquileia. “Huns, Heruls and Ostrogoths” celebrate bloody victories and greet their leader Attila who, in an impressive recitative, bids them sing a victory hymn. A group of female warriors is brought on, and their leader Odabella proclaims the valour and patriotic zeal of Italian women. . . . As Odabella leaves, the Roman general Ezio appears for a formal duet with Attila. In the Andante . . ., Ezio offers Attila the entire Roman empire if Italy can be left unmolested. Attila angrily rejects the proposal, and the warriors end with a cabaletta of mutual defiance. . . . The Rio-​Alto [Rialto] in the Adriatic lagoons. The scene opens with a sustained passage of local colour. . . . First comes a violent orchestral storm, then the gradual rising of dawn is portrayed with a passage of ever increasing orchestral colours and sounds. Foresto leads on a group of survivors from Attila’s attack on Aquileia. In an Andantino . . ., his thoughts turn to his beloved Odabella, captured by Attila. In the subsequent cabaletta . . ., the soloist is joined by the chorus for a rousing conclusion to the scene.18

17 Class notes from Bailey’s seminar at Yale University, fall semester, 1976. 18 Roger Parker, “Attila,” Oxford Music Online, accessed 2 January 2018.

442  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 12.7 outlines the prologue’s five numbers. Number 1 is a short Preludio in the key of C minor and Largo tempo. Two passages from the Preludio are shown in example 12.24. The Preludio exhibits important qualities of Verdi’s maturing harmonic language while also underscoring his ties to Italian tradition. Example 12.25 reduces the two passages to figured bass lines. The first passage is slightly reduced, especially at its beginning. (The fermatas on C and D♭ stand for prolongations lasting several measures each.) The stepwise basses, which lead to authentic cadences, recall partimento exercises such as those that Verdi worked through with his teacher Vincenzo Lavigna. By the time of Attila he was teaching them to Emanuele Muzio, his student and amanuensis since 1844.19 The most interesting aspect of the Preludio’s essentially conservative harmonic language is Verdi’s treatment of 64 chords, although this is less adventurous than we have seen in Mercadante’s reform operas. The 64 chords in measures 15, 20, and 24 (example 12.24) are cadential 64 s in the home key. The 64 in m. 14 is a typical weak-​ beat passing chord connecting two expressions of pre-​dominant function, iv and an augmented-​sixth chord. The first three chords in mm. 12–​13, which move in half-​note values, resemble the first three quarter-​note chords in m. 20: both progressions are essentially cadential, representing 3̂–4̂–5̂ in some key: C minor in m. 20, A♭ major in mm. 12–​13. Although the fourth above the bass in m. 13, A♭, resolves to G, a cadence in A♭ major is evaded; the bass continues to ascend until the augmented-​sixth chord on A♭ is reached. The 64 chord on B♭ in m. 22 is also approached as though it were a cadential 64, but the promised cadence in E♭ is also evaded; the bass continues to ascend to the tonic, C. I have tried to distinguish main from subsidiary keys in table 12.7, but a graph in musical notation may do this more effectively (example 12.26). The notation here is the same as that of example 12.18 with one important difference: sixteenth notes represent harmonies of pre-​dominant function, not leading tones. C is the tonic of the prologue in much the same way that E♭ is the tonic of act 3 in Giovanna d’Arco. After the C-​minor Preludio, each number either begins or ends in C major. Those numbers that do not end in C major—​nos. 2 and 3—​end in E♭ major, C minor’s relative. The family of keys closely related to C minor also includes the A♭ major of the tempo d’attacco in no. 4, the Attila–​Ezio duet. This kinetic movement aims repeatedly at C major as f:VA (compare example 12.11, Della Seta’s sketch of Ernani, act 3). F major plays an important role in the introduzione (no. 2) and an even larger role in the duet, whose slow movement is based on the contrast between Ezio’s F major and Attila’s F minor. F major is the key of Ezio’s famous couplet, “avrai tu l’universo, /​resti l’Italia a me” (“you will have the universe; leave Italy to me”). Thus, within the tonality of C that frames the Preludio and Prologo, almost every key can be heard as a diatonic relation to either C major or C minor.

19 On Lavigna’s Neapolitan training see Giorgio Sanguinetti, “Diminution and Harmonic Counterpoint in Late-​ Eighteenth-​ Century Naples: Vincenzo Lavigna’s Studies with Fedele Fenaroli,” Journal of Schenkerian Studies 7 (2013): 31–​61.

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  443 Table 12.7. Verdi, Attila, Prologue No. 1. Preludio

c

No. 2. Introduzione

C→F→E♭

Chorus (Allegro assai vivo): C→F Recitative: F→A♭→E♭:VA

Chorus (Allegro assai moderato e grandioso): E♭

No. 3. Scena e Cavatina Odabella Scena: C

C→E♭

Slow movement: C Tempo di mezzo: a→C:VA→E♭:VA Cabaletta: E♭

No. 4. Duetto Attila ed Ezio Scena: E♭→A♭:VA

A♭→F→C

Tempo d’attacco: A♭→f:VA Recitative: F

Slow movement: F→f→F Tempo di mezzo: F→C:VA Cabaletta: C No. 5. Scena e Cavatina Foresto Preludio (tempest): ends c:VA

c→F♯→C

Chorus 1 (Allegro): c→C Chorus 2 (Allegro moderato): a→E Tempo d’attacco: E→B→f♯:VA Slow movement: F♯

Tempo di mezzo: D→G (=​C:VA) Cabaletta: C

Example 12.26 reveals a few things that may be less clear in table 12.7. The first is that certain patterns of modulation occur twice. David Lawton coined the term double cycle to describe this phenomenon in Verdi’s music.20 In nos. 1–​3 there are two modulations from C (either mode) to E♭ major. In Attila, E♭ is a militaristic key, 20 David Lawton, “Tonality and Drama in Verdi’s Early Operas” (PhD diss., University of California–​ Berkeley, 1973).

Example 12.24.  Attila, Preludio

Example 12.24.  Continued

a. mm. 1–​15 b. mm. 19–​25 Example 12.25.  Figured-​bass reduction of ­example 12.24

a. mm. 1–​15 b. mm. 19–​25

446  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 12.26.  Attila, Prologue: Bass-​line reduction

a key of brass instruments and warlike choruses. The first C-​to-​E♭ modulation occurs in nos. 1–​2; the second is contained entirely within no. 3. The former modulation proceeds rather conventionally, following the descending circle of fifths, C–​F–​B♭–​E♭ (B♭ is not tonicized). The latter is executed in a less regular manner. There are repeated references to the key of E minor; there is also a prominent move from C major to A minor at the beginning of Odabella’s tempo di mezzo. Both minor keys are diatonic mediants in C major. The crucial move, which is bracketed in example 12.26 (third system), is from G major to an augmented-​ sixth chord that resolves to E♭:VA. Two moves of a major third downward lead the bass from G to E♭, then from E♭ to C♭. Harmonic motions by

  Ernani to Attila (1844–1846)   T  447 consecutive major thirds, consecutive minor thirds, or consecutive whole tones will become more common in Verdi’s music of the 1850s. The duet (no. 4) progresses in the opposite direction, from E♭ major back to C major. The basis of this motion is again almost Classical in its propriety. No. 5 is another matter. Although officially Foresto’s cavatina, this number is structured like a finale. There is a substantial orchestral prelude—​the storm and sunrise mentioned by Parker—​a chorus, and a complete, four-​movement solita forma, including a tempo d’attacco. The number moves through another circle of fifths, but this time the circle ascends as shown in example 12.26. Following a sudden move from C major (the sunrise) to A minor—​the second such move we have heard in the prologue—​keys ascend in fifths from A minor (the chorus) to E major (beginning of the tempo d’attacco) to B major (end of the tempo d’attacco) to F♯ major (cantabile). Because this F♯ major is reached through ascending fifths, F♯ is heard as a sharp key, not a respelling of G♭ as in act 3 of Giovanna d’Arco. The return from F♯ to C is faster: after Foresto’s cantabile, F♯ is reharmonized as 3̂ of D major, which proceeds down the circle of fifths, D–​G–​C, reaching C major for the cabaletta. Foresto’s cantabile is analyzed by Steven Huebner in the first of his articles on lyric form.21 It is Huebner’s first example, because it is a very conventional lyric form. What is extreme about the movement is not its form but its key. This is one of the few purely lyrical movements in a rather bombastic opera, and its remote key sets it still further apart. Foresto, who knows that his beloved Odabella has been captured by the Huns, allows himself a moment of private emotion before he returns to his public role as a commander of the Christian forces. Like the Preludio, the storm that begins no. 5 is in C minor; the following sunrise is in a brilliant C major. Several authors have connected this scena with the passage from darkness to light in Haydn’s Creation. Anselm Gerhard has extended this insight to the entire opera, citing Attila as an example of Verdi’s celebrated chiaroscuro. He notes the many references to light and darkness in the opera’s stage directions, and he links Verdi’s employment of keys—​especially contrasts of major and minor—​to the elemental contrast of light and darkness.22

21 Huebner, “Lyric Form in ‘Ottocento’ Opera,” 124–​26. 22 Gerhard, “Verdi’s Attila.”

C HA P T E R

Thirteeen

Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–​1853)

Because these are the most analyzed of Verdi’s operas, the discussion in this chapter will often be filtered through the observations of others.

Verdi and Meyerbeer Verdi’s career changed a great deal in the five years between Attila and Rigoletto. He was based in Paris for two of those years, 1847–​1849. Shortly before he moved to Paris he composed Macbeth for Florence, the Italian city most attuned to musical fashions beyond the Alps. It was Florence that saw the Italian premieres of Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1840) and Les Huguenots (1841). Florence was also the home of Abramo Basevi, whose Verdi criticism we will continue to encounter in these pages. To what extent was Meyerbeer a musical model for Verdi? Some authors have claimed to detect his influence as early as Giovanna d’Arco, but this claim probably has more to do with dramaturgy than music. We know from his letters that Verdi admired Meyerbeer’s grands opéras. He repeatedly praised the coronation scene in Le prophète, which he heard in Paris in 1849. That Meyerbeer’s effect on Verdi was partly musical is never denied for the operas from Les vêpres siciliennes onward, but the question remains for earlier operas. A detailed study of this issue by Milan Pospíšil was described in c­ hapter 10. A briefer summary may be in order here. Pospíšil identifies two Meyerbeerian devices that Verdi uses to create similar effects of surprise, disorientation, and intensification. The first involves a sudden ascent, in parallel octaves, from an empty octave to a major triad or dominant seventh chord whose root lies one semitone higher. Two such ascents were shown in ­example 10.3. The second device also starts from an outer-​voice octave, usually harmonized by a major triad, but it involves contrary rather than parallel motion. Each note of the octave leads outward by semitone to a major ninth, which is harmonized by a dominant 42 chord (­example 10.4). Outward chromatic motion often continues beyond this point, resulting in what Robert Gauldin has termed a chromatic wedge progression. Chromatic wedges involve contrary motion by definition, but that motion may proceed in either direction. An inward chromatic wedge results in the so-​called chromatic omnibus, also discussed in ­chapter 10, or in some variant of the omnibus. The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0014

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  449

A harmonic usage not discussed by Pospíšil but described in ­chapter 10 is the unusual treatment of 64 chords. A study of Verdi’s 64 chords by Giorgio Sanguinetti and Deborah Burton cites many characteristic examples, all but one of them from operas composed in 1847 or later.1 Their principal focus is what they call the “wonder” 64, which is a second-​inversion triad, always major, that is neither cadential, neighboring, nor passing in function. With few exceptions, the “wonder” 6 is left by leap in the bass, and the next chord has a different root. Usually the 6 is 4 4 also approached by leap, and it is emphasized in some way.2 Leaping away from the bass of a 64 chord while changing the root violates the norms of thoroughbass and partimento practice. Verdi began to cultivate the shock value of “wonder” 64s in two operas from 1847, Macbeth and I masnadieri. The only pre-​1847 example in the Sanguinetti-​Burton study is from Giovanna d’Arco, and that is a near-​quotation of a passage from Mercadante’s Il bravo (­example 11.6). Example 13.1 shows one of Verdi’s best-​known “wonder” 64s. It occurs in Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, part of the 1847 Macbeth that survived unchanged in the 1865 revision. Although the number is in D♭ major, the passage shown here is in F♭ major, the key of the flatted mediant (♭IIIT). Verdi could have spelled the key as E major—​many composers, including Schubert and Chopin, would have done so—​but he chose not to. When the “wonder” 64 arrives in m. 96, as ♭VI of F♭ major in second inversion, Verdi takes pity on the orchestra and spells the chord as C major, not D♭♭ major. But he has no such pity for Lady Macbeth. To sing the part as Verdi wanted it sung—​with “una voce aspra, soffocata, cupa” (“a voice that is harsh, strangled, gloomy”)3—​requires Lady to cope with the leap of a diminished fourth, A♭–​D♭♭, and with the scale of F♭ minor, which has eleven flats. In this passage, two 64 chords occur in immediate succession. The first one, in the second half of m. 95, might be heard as a cadential 64 resolving to V7 in the middle of the next measure; this is how one would hear it if the second 64 were removed (example 13.2). Other factors render the first 64 functionally ambiguous. The preceding measures establish a rhythm of one harmony per measure; the placement of the 64 in the weak half of a measure is atypical. Consequently, one might hear the 64 in m. 95 as a second-​inversion tonic, extending the harmony of beat 1. The chord on beat 2 would act as a neighboring chord to this inverted tonic. The bass note of the “wonder” 64 (m. 96) is an A♭♭ masquerading as G♮. This note is ♭3̂ of F♭ major, which is itself ♭3̂ of D♭ major.4 The orchestral bass arpeggiates an F♭ minor triad first downward, then upward, in mm. 95–​97, ending with the harmonic cadence ♭VI–​V7–​I. 1 Sanguinetti and Burton, “Verdi’s Six-​Fours,” 76. 2 Sanguinetti and Burton (74) describe the “wonder” 64 as parenthetical to an ongoing cadential progression, but sometimes the 64 itself constitutes the cadential pre-​dominant. 3 Verdi, letter of 23 November 1848 to Salvatore Cammarano; Copialettere, 60–​62. The letter is discussed in Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:275. 4 Compare the first two modulations in the Marcia funebre from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 26, from A♭ minor to C♭ major and from B minor to D major. The latter modulation, without the enharmonic respelling, would have been from C♭ minor (ten flats) to its relative, E♭♭ major.

Example 13.1.  Verdi, Macbeth, act 4, Sonnambulismo di Lady Macbeth, mm. 93–​97

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  451 Example 13.2.  Recomposition of mm. 95–​97 (rhythm simplified)

Example 13.3 is from the Rigoletto–​Sparafucile duet in Rigoletto. The key is F major. The entire duet is in parlante texture; the voices declaim over a regular, symmetrical melody in the orchestra. Again two 64 chords follow in immediate succession, in mm. 54–​55. The relation between the chords is much the same as example 13.1: an apparent tonic 64 moves to ♭VI in second inversion. The first 64 chord is even placed on the same beat of the measure, the third beat in . This 64 chord is at least prospectively cadential, marking both the climax of the phrase and the beginning of the dominant function within an expanded cadence. Following Robert Hatten, Sanguinetti and Burton would call this an “arrival” 64. As before, the second or “wonder” 64 is to be played extremely softly. This time, the progression’s guiding thread lies not in the bass but in the orchestral melody: it is the ascending line C–​D♭–​D♮–​E–​F, played by cello and double-​bass soli in mm. 55–​57.

Rigoletto and Il trovatore Compared Rigoletto and Il trovatore are often described as opposites, and it is easy to see why. Although its libretto is based on Victor Hugo, Rigoletto continues the line of “Shakespearean” tragic operas that begins with Macbeth and ends with Otello. The hallmark of Shakespeare’s manner, Verdi said, is the “mixture of the comic and the terrible,”5 and Verdi himself linked the character of Hugo’s Triboulet (Rigoletto in the opera) to Shakespeare.6 By contrast, Il trovatore is a traditional Italian opera that harks back to Ernani in its lyricism, its formal conservatism, its Spanish setting, and its ferocious energy. Table 13.1 lists the numbers and movements in Rigoletto, including the principal keys. Table 13.2 does the same for Il trovatore. It is probably a coincidence that both operas contain fourteen numbers. In most cases, the keys of scene are omitted from

5 “Questo misto di comico e di terribile (a uso Shakespeare).” Letter to Cammarano, 24 March 1849, in Carlo Matteo Mossa, ed., Carteggio Verdi–​Cammarano (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 2001), 100. 6 Letter to Piave of 8 May 1850, quoted in Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:477.

Example 13.3.  Rigoletto, act 1, Duetto Rigoletto–​Sparafucile, mm. 52–​57

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  453 Table 13.1.  Rigoletto: Outline of numbers No. 1. Preludio

c ACT I A♭→c→f→d♭→D♭

No. 2. Introduzione. No. 3. Duetto Rigoletto e Sparafucile

F

C→A♭→D♭→A→E♭

No. 4. Scena e Duetto Gilda e Rigoletto Scena (Rigoletto alone): F→B♭→C

Tempo d’attacco: C→E♭ (no final cadence) Slow movement: A♭

Tempo di mezzo: A♭→D♭; then A♮→E♭:VA Cabaletta: E♭

G→B♭→D♭

No. 5. Scena e Duetto Gilda e Duca Scena: E♭→G

Tempo d’attacco: G→B♭ Slow movement: B♭

Tempo di mezzo: ends D♭:VA Cabaletta: D♭

No. 6. Aria Gilda

E

No. 7. Finale Primo

A♭→E♭→e♭

Tempo d’attacco: A♭ Chorus: E♭

Tempo di mezzo: E♭→e♭ No. 8. Scena ed Aria Duca Scena: d→F→D♭

ACT II

[d→]G♭/​F♯→A→D

Slow movement: G♭

Tempo di mezzo (chorus): F♯→A Cabaletta: D

No. 9. Scena ed Aria Rigoletto Scena: e→c:VA

c→f→D♭

Andante mosso agitato: c (continued)

454  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 13.1. (Continued) Meno mosso: f; ends f:VA [L’istesso tempo]: D♭ e→C→D♭→c→A♭

No. 10. Scena e Duetto Gilda e Rigoletto Scena: D♭→C; ends e:VA

Tempo d’attacco: e→C, then A♭→f:VA Slow movement: D♭ Tempo di mezzo: c Cabaletta: A♭ ACT III No. 11. Scena e Canzone Duca

B

Scena: a→E→B:VA Canzone: B No. 12. Quartetto Tempo d’attacco: E→c♯:VA Slow movement: D♭

No. 13. Scena, Terzetto, e Tempesta

E→D♭

[D→B] E→A→d

Scena: D→G→B Tempo d’attacco: E→A Stretta: d and D alternate; ends d:PAC Orchestral postlude (with wordless chorus): d:VA becomes A:I No. 14. Scena e Duetto Finale Scena: modulates widely

D♭

Slow movement: d♭→D♭

the list of principal keys for numbers. I have made exceptions where a scena begins with an especially weighty prelude, or if a number begins and ends with the same tonic only if its scena is included. Although these operas are slightly longer than many of Verdi’s earlier operas, both seem remarkably concise. The impression of concision owes, in part, to a high degree of continuity between numbers, especially in Rigoletto. An example from David Lawton’s study of that opera illustrates the point (example

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  455 Table 13.2.  Il trovatore: Outline of numbers ACT I No. 1. Introduzione

E→e→a

No. 2. Cavatina Leonora

[E♭] A♭

Prelude: E♭

Scena: E♭→E→D♭→A♭

Slow movement: a♭→A♭

Tempo di mezzo: ends A♭:VA Cabaletta: A♭

[C]‌ e→d♭→D♭

No. 3. Scena Romanza e Terzetto Prelude: C Scena: C→F→B♭ Romanza: e♭→E♭

Scena resumed: E♭→C

Tempo d’attacco: e→c♯:VA Stretta: d♭→D♭

ACT II

No. 4. Coro di Zingari e Canzone

e→C

Chorus: e→C Canzone: e Chorus: e→C No. 5. Racconto d’Azucena

a

No. 6. Scena e Duetto (Azucena–​Manrico)

C→g→G

Scena: modulates widely Primo tempo (Allegro, but with the form of a slow movement): C Tempo di mezzo: C→g:VA Cabaletta: g→G No. 7. Aria Conte Prelude: F

[F]‌ B♭→D♭

Scena: F becomes B♭:VA Slow movement: B♭

(continued)

456  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 13.2. (Continued) Tempo di mezzo: F→f→A♭ Cabaletta: D♭

E♭→A♭

No. 8. Finale

Chorus: E♭

Scena: c→C→a♭:VA

Slow movement (concertato): A♭ Tempo di mezzo: a♭; ends a♭:VA

Reprise of a passage from the slow movement: A♭ ACT III

No. 9. Coro

C→F

No. 10. Scena e Terzetto

e→E; F

Scena: modulates widely Tempo d’attacco: e→E Stretta: F f→D♭; F→C

No. 11. Aria Manrico Scena: c→f:VA Slow movement: f→A♭→D♭ Tempo di mezzo: F→c:VA Cabaletta: C ACT IV No. 12. Scena ed Aria Leonora Scena: f

f→A♭→F

Slow movement: f Tempo di mezzo (“Miserere”): a♭→A♭; then f Cabaletta: F

No. 13. Scena e Duetto (Leonora–​Conte) Scena: F→E♭

Tempo d’attacco: E♭ becomes a♭:VA Slow movement: A♭

Tempo di mezzo: a♭→C; C becomes f:VA Cabaletta: F

E♭→A♭→F

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  457 Table 13.2. (Continued) No. 14. Finale Ultimo Scena: D♭→e♭→B→b→G

[D♭→G] g→G; c→E♭→e♭

Slow movement: g→G

Tempo di mezzo 1: g→G→D; D becomes g:VA Reprise of a passage from the slow movement): G Tempo di mezzo 2: c Andante; Più mosso; Allegro: E♭→ e♭

13.4): especially in act 1, the end of one number flows into the beginning of the next.7 It is as though Verdi sought to reproduce the flow of time in a staged play. Because most connections between numbers in Rigoletto are seamless, it is significant when the Duke’s aria (the opening number in act 2) ends in D major and the following number, Rigoletto’s aria, begins in E minor. There is no linking recitative, no orchestral transition; the triads of D major and E minor, which have no notes in common, are simply juxtaposed. One perceives what Marcello Conati calls “a tonal caesura, the only one in the entire opera.”8 In his book Verdi’s Theater, Gilles de Van writes that when Verdi modulates by whole tone, there is often “a progression in the drama, but without the feeling of sudden urgency that the semitone shift creates.”9 I will return to de Van’s idea regarding the sudden urgency of modulation by ascending semitone, because it is important in Rigoletto. It also reflects what Verdi may have learned from Meyerbeer. There are four solo numbers in Rigoletto, but the Duke’s aria is the only one to contain a complete solita forma. By contrast, four of the five solo numbers in Il trovatore follow the complete pattern. Although most numbers in Il trovatore are based on la solita forma, until act 4 it is only arias that present it in its entirety. In acts 1–​3, each ensemble number omits at least one of the standard movement-​ types. Usually (nos. 3, 6, and 10) it is the slow movement that is omitted, a fact that contributes to the effect of concision. Outside of arias, the only regular slow movement in acts 1–​3 is the concertato of the act 2 finale (no. 8), which, as Verdi pointed out, is not an adagio but an andante mosso.10 The opera contains relatively few passages of quiet reflection, despite its justly celebrated wealth of melody. 7 David Lawton, “Tonal Structure and Dramatic Action in Rigoletto,” in Atti del IIIo Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani, 1559–​81; 1568–​69. The musical text of Lawton’s examples is taken from the old Ricordi vocal score (catalogue no. 42313). 8 Marcello Conati, Rigoletto: Un’analisi drammatico-​musicale (Venice: Marsilio, 1992), 259. 9 Gilles de Van, Verdi’s Theater: Creating Drama through Music, trans. Gilda Roberts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 328. 10 The genesis of Il trovatore has been much studied. It was complicated by the death of Cammarano, the original librettist, before Verdi had completed the opera. Revisions to the libretto were made by Leone Emanuele Bardare in consultation with Verdi and his friend Cesare De Sanctis. See, inter alia, Fabrizio Della Seta, “Per un’edizione del libretto del Trovatore: Documenti nuovi e vecchi,” Philomusica on-​line 18 (2019): 87–​140, especially 90–​91; also Carlo Mossa, “La genesi del libretto del Trovatore,” Studi verdiani 8 (1992): 52–​103.

Example 13.4.  Rigoletto: Continuity between numbers*

a. From no. 2 to no. 3 b. From no. 4 to no. 5 c. From no. 5 to no. 6 * from David Lawton, “Tonal Structure and Dramatic Action in Rigoletto.” Bollettino dell’Istituto Verdi n. 9 volume III, pp. 1568–​69. Reproduced by permission of Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  459 The Azucena–​Manrico duet (no. 6) is especially interesting in this regard. Its primo tempo is an allegro in  meter, like a tempo d’attacco, but the movement begins and ends in the same key, unlike a tempo d’attacco, and it ends with full closure and a cadenza, like a slow movement. The special nature of recitative in these operas also contributes to the impression that no musical time is wasted. On one hand, there is less “dry” recitative than in most operas of this period. When recitative in Rigoletto and Il trovatore is dry, it is very dry indeed: examples include Rigoletto’s order to Gilda, immediately following the act 3 quartet, to ride to Verona dressed in male clothing; and the conversation between Azucena and Manrico in act 2 of Il trovatore, marked by Verdi Tutto questo Recitativo molto presto. On the other hand, both operas contain recitatives of the utmost dramatic and musical fluidity, recitatives that incorporate passages of arioso, parlante, chorus, or all three. The outstanding examples are all in Rigoletto: Rigoletto’s soliloquy “Pari siamo” (scena of no. 4); the scena of his aria (no. 9); and the scena of the Scena, Terzetto, e Tempesta (no. 13). Bellini wrote scene of comparable intensity and freedom, especially in I Capuleti and Norma. In Verdi’s output, the closest antecedents may be found in Macbeth. In both Macbeth and Rigoletto, it can be difficult for a listener to discern where a scena ends and the formal number begins. Something else that these operas have in common is that much of their action takes place at night, often out of doors, as in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Here, viewed from this perspective, are the scenic divisions of Rigoletto: Act 1/​1 (no. 2): indoors, evening, but brilliantly lit Act 1/​2 (nos. 3–​7): outdoors, night Act 2: indoors, day Act 3: mostly outdoors; night

And of Il trovatore: Act 1: outdoors, night Act 2/​1 (nos. 4–​6): outdoors, day Act 2/​2 (nos. 7–​8): outdoors, night Act 3: outdoors, day Act 4: indoors, night

My analysis of Rigoletto is necessarily selective. It encompasses four interrelated subjects: recurring motives; recurring sonorities, both pitches and chords; associative tonality; and tonal structure. All have been extensively treated by others, including Julian Budden, Wolfgang Osthoff, Martin Chusid, Harold Powers, Marcello Conati, David Lawton, David Kimbell, and Elizabeth Hudson.11 11 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:475–​510; Osthoff, “The Musical Characterization of Gilda,” Verdi Bollettino 3, no. 8 (1973): 1275–​1314; Chusid, “Rigoletto and Monterone: A Study in Musical Dramaturgy,” Proceedings of the XI Congress of the IMS (Copenhagen: Hansen, 1974), 325–​36; Chusid, “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” in Analyzing Opera, ed. Abbate and Parker, 241–​61; Powers, “Il ‘do del baritono’ ”; Conati, Rigoletto; Lawton, “Tonal Structure and Dramatic Action in Rigoletto”; Kimbell, “The Originality of Rigoletto,” in Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 623–​41; Hudson, “Gilda Seduced: A Tale Untold,” Cambridge Opera Journal 4 (1992): 229–​51.

460  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

Some Aspects of Rigoletto Recurring Motives Recurring motives, or quotations from earlier numbers, were not uncommon in operas of the primo ottocento and even earlier. Some recurring motives are orchestral, like Wagner’s leitmotifs; others are vocal melodies. The diegetic romance “Une fièvre brûlante” is heard repeatedly in Grétry’s Richard Cœur-​de-​lion (1784), much as the canzone “La donna è mobile” recurs in act 3 of Rigoletto and with similar dramatic justification: a character who sings proves that he is still alive. Samiel’s orchestral motive runs through Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821); Euryanthe (1823) is full of reminiscence motives, as they are often called. Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon and Bellini’s Norma feature recurring marches for Hebrews and Druids respectively. Among Verdi’s early operas, I due Foscari (1844) goes furthest in this direction, devoting characteristic orchestral motives to Lucrezia and other characters. The best-​known leitmotif in Rigoletto, the motive of the curse, is both vocal and orchestral. Once again, Lawton draws together many of the relevant passages (example 13.5). Played by the orchestra, it is the first thing that we hear (13.5a). Later, Rigoletto intones the motive each time he reflects on the curse that Monterone has placed on him. The motive occurs always at the same pitch level, with C in both melody and bass. The first chord is spelled as an augmented sixth when it resolves to C minor, but as a seventh chord when it resolves to C major (13.5b, d, and e); in both cases the chord’s local function is that of a common-​tone augmented sixth.12 Conati makes much of the chord’s potential as V7 of D♭, but the motive is never resolved directly into that key, and its tripled or quadrupled C discourages hearing C as a leading tone even where D♭ major follows (13.5c). The chord’s potential to turn into D♭:V7 remains just that—​potential—​despite the frequency of D♭ as a harmonic goal. Closely connected to the curse motive is the minor third C–​E♭, which is frequently outlined in Rigoletto’s vocal line, with or without a passing D. Chusid has called attention to this minor third; example 13.6 shows six of its appearances. This is another motive that links Rigoletto to Monterone: the courtiers intone the minor third to Monterone’s name on his first entrance (13.6a). In every case, at least one note of the minor third is harmonized by the diminished-​seventh chord C–​E♭–​F♯–​A, or C30.13 Rarely mentioned in studies of Rigoletto is a chromatic variant of the minor third (example 13.7). Here the interval is filled in chromatically, encompassing

12 See the discussion of common-​tone augmented-​sixth chords in Edward Aldwell, Carl Schachter, and Allen Cadwallader, Harmony and Voice Leading, 5th ed., 594. 13 In the act 1 finale, mm. 131–​32, Gilda sings a transposition of Rigoletto’s minor third, E♭5–​G♭5–​ E♭5, as she is being abducted. The minor-​third transposition keeps the motive within C30, and her cry for help (“Aita!”) is harmonized by that chord. The rhythm is essentially that of example 13.6a—​a clear link between Gilda and Monterone, whose daughter was similarly abducted.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  461 Example 13.5.  The curse motive*

462  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 13.5.  Continued

* from David Lawton, “Tonal Structure and Dramatic Action in Rigoletto.” Bollettino dell’Istituto Verdi n. 9 volume III, pp. 1570–​71. Reproduced by permission of Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani. four pitches in all; it may or may not return to the starting pitch. The initial tone is usually set just after a downbeat; the goal tone appears on the next downbeat. This motive’s first appearance (13.7a) is in the stretta of the chorus preceding Monterone’s entrance in the introduzione. The meter is alla breve. Some courtiers,

Example 13.6.  The minor third C–​E♭ in vocal lines

a. No. 2, mm. 445–​47 b. No. 4, mm. 65–​66 c. No. 4, mm. 115–​16 d. No. 7, mm. 157–​61 e. No. 9, mm. 60–​61 f. No. 9, mm. 95–​96

Example 13.7.  The vendetta motive

a. No. 2, mm. 402–​5 (Duke and chorus only) b. No. 13, mm. 48–​50 c. No. 14, mm. 168–​74

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  465 fed up with Rigoletto’s mockery, swear vengeance, but in such a way that their colleagues do not hear. Later occurrences will retain this air of secrecy. The motive’s musical significance is suggested by the conflict between its musical end-​accent—​ which coincides with accented syllables in the other vocal parts—​and the natural accentuation of the word vendetta. The vendetta motive, as I shall call it, occurs less often than Rigoletto’s minor third. The latter motive is concentrated in acts 1 and 2. The vendetta motive makes its most memorable appearances in act 3, where Rigoletto tries to exact vengeance on the Duke. In no. 13 (­example 13.7b), the wind, represented by the wordless chorus, carries the scent of vengeance through the city, across the river, and into Sparafucile’s tavern. In the scena of no. 14 (13.7c), lower strings and bassoons answer Rigoletto’s anguished question to Gilda. They understand what Rigoletto, as yet, has not fully grasped—​not only who has stabbed Gilda, but why Rigoletto himself is responsible.

Recurring Sonorities Chusid’s 1974 essay “Rigoletto and Monterone” includes one of the earliest discussions of a sonorità: the middle C that is sung obsessively by the opera’s two baritone characters. Harold Powers returned to this subject in his 1993 study “Il ‘do del baritono’ nelle ‘gioco delle parti’ verdiano” (“ ‘Baritone C’ in Verdi’s ‘game of [vocal] parts’ ”). As Powers demonstrates, the same sonorità serves the title character in Verdi’s Macbeth, another part created by the baritone Felice Varesi. As we saw in c­ hapter 12, Carlo in Ernani also tends to recite on middle C, although Varesi did not create that role. Writing one year before Chusid, Osthoff makes a strong case for E as a defining sonority for Gilda.14 Osthoff writes of E as both a key and a pitch class. E5 is the pitch on which Gilda repeats the name the Duke has given her, Gualtier Maldè, in the scena of her aria (no. 6), and E5 remains prominent in the aria itself. On the same pitch Gilda, in another act of disguise, will ask Maddalena and Sparafucile for shelter on a stormy night (no. 13), knowing that she is going to her death. Unlike Petrobelli and Powers, Osthoff does not restrict the sonorità to vocal pitches or specific registers. As he notes, the excited violin figuration that opens the first Gilda–​ Rigoletto duet (example 13.8) hovers around a repeated E6, although the key is C major. In the opening measures of act 3, the first violins hover around E4 (example 13.9). The key here is nominally A minor, but the effect is Phrygian, with E as the modal final. Conati makes a case for F♯ as the Duke’s defining sonorità.15 Again, both a key and a pitch class are meant. The slow movement of the Duke’s aria (no. 8) is in G♭ major. In his B-​major canzone (no. 11), F♯4 is not prominent at first, but it becomes 14 Osthoff, “Musical Characterization,” 1283–​96. Osthoff relates Verdi’s use of E major and flutes to that of earlier composers, especially Mozart. 15 Conati, Rigoletto, 156.

466  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 13.8.  No. 4, mm. 69–​72

Example 13.9.  No. 11, mm. 1–​9

very prominent toward the end. Although Conati does not mention it, F♯ also forms part of the tonic triad of D major, the key of the Duke’s cabaletta, “Possente amor.” The cabaletta’s melody unfolds within the octave F♯3–​F♯4, with occasional extensions to A4. Other passages that Conati cites do not involve local recurrences of F♯ and are less convincing for that reason. That recurring harmonic sonorities—​chords and orchestrations thereof—​are important in Rigoletto is beyond dispute. Each time Rigoletto sings the motive of the curse, the accompanying chords are scored in the same way: low clarinets, low bassoons, and low strings (see example 13.11, mm. 60–​61). Compare the scoring of Samiel’s motive in Der Freischütz (example 13.10).16 Samiel’s chord is C30: C–​E♭–​F♯–​A, with A in the bass. The same chord, with any of its notes in the bass, is conspicuous in Rigoletto. While all three diminished-​ seventh chords occur prominently in the opera, C30 occurs most often and most memorably. The chord is especially tied to the key of C minor with which the

16 Example 13.10 is taken from the overture, mm. 26–​27. Oboes and horns are added to some later statements, but all pitches remain in the same registers. Violins and violas are sometimes tremolando, sometimes not.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  467 Example 13.10.  Weber, Der Freischütz, Samiel’s motive

opera begins and in which Rigoletto sings the first section of his aria (no. 9). As we have seen, C30 is also associated with the melodic motive C–​E♭–​C (example 13.6). Gilda is associated not only with the key of E major but with ethereal orchestration, emphasizing treble registers. The sonic contrast between Rigoletto and Gilda is laid bare in Rigoletto’s scena “Pari siamo,” where the thought of Gilda (E major) is juxtaposed with his recollection of Monterone’s curse (C major becomes f:VA). The passage is shown in full score in example 13.11. Timbrally, Gilda is associated with the flute throughout act 1. Harmonically, the link between the excerpt’s two halves is the deceptive cadence in m. 57. Here, if anywhere in the opera, there is real ambiguity between a “German” augmented-​sixth chord (in E: C–​E–​G–​A♯) and a dominant seventh (in F: C–​E–​G–​B♭). B♭, the last note of the chord to be sounded, is the nub of the issue—​heaven and hell balanced on an enharmonic knife edge.

Associative Tonality Among writers on Rigoletto, Conati goes furthest in claiming referential meaning for keys and pitches. Table 13.3 shows his claimed associations. Each pitch listed seems at once to represent a sonorità, a pitch class, a triad of either mode, and a key of either mode. He assigns special importance to those pitches he associates with the three principal characters—​C for Rigoletto, E for Gilda, and F♯ for the Duke. The tritone C/​F♯, which embodies the opposition between the male principals, belongs to what Conati calls l’accordo della maledizione, the chord of the curse (see example 13.5). This chord’s resolution to C major is labeled minaccia di sventura (threat of catastrophe); he notes that C major contains Gilda’s pitch, E. When, in the opera’s final cadence, Rigoletto cries “Ah! la maledizione!,” V7 of D♭, the chord of the curse, resolves to D♭ minor.17 Conati labels this resolution sventura avvenuta (actual catastrophe), and he notes that D♭ minor also includes Gilda’s pitch. Some associations claimed by Conati are more convincing than others. His association of A♭ with the courtiers is unproblematic for the opening scene, where 17 The chord has an added minor ninth, B♭♭.

Example 13.11.  No. 4, mm. 52–​61 (full score)

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  469 Table 13.3.  Associative tonality in Rigoletto (adapted from Conati, Rigoletto, p. 161) C

Monterone→Rigoletto

E

Gilda

G♭ (F♯)

Duke of Mantua

F

Sparafucile

A♭

Courtiers

B♭

Seduction

E♭

Paternal love

D

Criminal act

D♭

Tragic outcome

the key of A♭ major dominates up to Monterone’s entrance. The same key opens the abduction scene (no. 7), and it brings down the act 2 curtain with Rigoletto’s cabaletta of vengeance (no. 10). All of these passages refer to the Duke’s court. But A♭ major also appears when Verdi presents Rigoletto’s sonorità, C4, in a softer light, as a major third: his account of Gilda’s mother in no. 4 (“Deh non parlare al misero”), which Gilda answers in A♭ minor; and his futile wish in no. 10 that Gilda could have been spared dishonor (“Solo per me l’infamia”). There seem to be at least two distinct motivations for A♭ major, and the key’s meaning differs correspondingly. Chusid rightly points out the distinction.18 The Rigoletto–​Sparafucile duet (no. 3) is in F major. The opera’s only extended section in F minor is the middle part of Rigoletto’s aria (no. 9), where he breaks down before the courtiers and tries, grotesquely, to win them over. Another F-​ minor passage occurs in the tempo d’attacco of no. 10, but that passage begins in A♭ major and emphasizes F minor’s dominant more than its tonic. Sparafucile’s appearances in act 3 are all in keys other than F. Conati’s association of F with Sparafucile does not convince. By common consent, E major is Gilda’s key, at least in act 1, although her aria was initially sketched a semitone higher.19 Is E major still her key in act 3, where it makes its other extended appearance? The first movement of the quartet (no. 12) is in E major. The quartet is staged for Gilda’s benefit: Rigoletto forces her to watch as the Duke seduces Maddalena. Chusid rightly notes the similarity between the sixteenth-​note figure in the violins here and in “Caro nome” (m. 20); the repeated

18 Chusid, “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” 247 and 251. 19 See the discussion of transpositions to Gilda’s part in Powers, “One Halfstep at a Time: Tonal Transposition and ‘Split Association’ in Italian Opera,” Cambridge Opera Journal 7 (1995): 135–​64; 152–​57.

470  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera note in both cases is B, representing E:5.̂ 20 But Osthoff is also right to recall the violin figure from the tempo d’attacco of no. 4 (example 13.8), where the repeated note is E in a C-​major context.21 Both passages from act 1 refer to Gilda’s tremulous emotions. Although Gilda is a passive spectator in the quartet’s first movement, it may be her heart, not that of the more experienced Maddalena, that flutters in the violins. E also plays a role in the scena of no. 11. The brief prelude, shown in example 13.9, is more about E as 5̂ than A as 1̂. The low notes on the first four downbeats outline the descending fourth A–​G♯–​F♮–​E; from m. 4 to the end of the prelude, a complete Phrygian scale on E is sounded in the bass. Once the recitative begins, a progression in descending fifths leads from E, through A minor, to D–​G (G:V–​I). Gilda’s assertion that the Duke still loves her turns the music from G major to E minor (example 13.12, m. 23); Rigoletto then cadences in the latter key (m. 25). Here the music of mm. 3–​4 returns, turning E back into a dominant—​or, as I prefer to hear it, a Phrygian final. The following Allegro reasserts E as tonic and begins the modulation to B. It is precisely at the first dominant of B that the Duke becomes the scene’s focus. The Duke’s B major is thus surrounded on both sides by E, either major or Phrygian. At this point in the opera, we might associate E with Gilda’s sad education in the ways of the world.22 Chusid pursues the meaning of E further. The last passage in the opera in which E is emphasized occurs in the lengthy scena of no. 14. After he has heard the Duke singing from afar, Rigoletto cuts open the sack; his recognition of his daughter is accompanied by a fortissimo chord of E major (example 13.13). As Chusid writes, “despite his attempt to reason away what he sees . . . the sonority helps to confirm the truth.”23 Chusid does not mention that E major is approached as though it were V of A minor, just as it was at the beginning of act 3. From the Duke’s B major (which becomes B minor once the Duke falls silent), the orchestral bass descends through the Phrygian pentachord B–​A–​G–​F♮–​E, adding B♭ as a chromatic passing tone. Once E is reached, the orchestra’s E–​E octave is repeatedly embellished, in Phrygian fashion, with its neighbors F♮ and D. The reference to the act’s Phrygian prelude seems clear. Does E minor also belong to Gilda? Most writers, including Osthoff, have answered in the affirmative. When Verdi transposed Gilda’s aria from F major to E major, he also transposed the beginning of no. 10 from F minor to E minor. Chusid and Powers have claimed that these transpositions prove Verdi’s intention to give Gilda her own musical identity. Powers addresses the musical relation between Gilda and Rigoletto thus: With ‘Solo per me l’infamia’ [in the duet] brought down into F minor, however, Verdi evidently thought Gilda’s part in the tempo d’attacco—​‘Tutte le feste al tempio’—​should also be transposed down a halfstep too, so that the end of her proposta, in C major, would prepare baritone c′ [C4] in the transposed ‘Solo per me 20 21 22 23

Chusid, “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” 255–​56. Osthoff, “The Musical Characterization of Gilda,” 1284. Compare Chusid, “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” 254–​55. Chusid, “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” 257.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  471 Example 13.12.  No. 11, mm. 21–​27

l’infamia.’ . . . The transposition provides Gilda with an independent tonal space of her own . . . the E minor/​C major complex, one of whose common tones is pitch class E—​where in the continuity draft she merely carries on in her father’s tonal space. The transposition of ‘Caro nome’ from F major down to E major establishes Gilda’s tonal space in the Garden scene in Act I, and like mezzo-​soprano b′ [B4] for Azucena and baritone c′ for Rigoletto, soprano e″ [E5] is established as a sonority for Gilda. . . .24

The scena of Rigoletto’s aria—​which precedes the duet to which Powers refers—​ also begins in E minor, returning to this key in rondo-​ like fashion before modulating away in the manner of a tempo d’attacco. He is seeking Gilda, or information regarding her whereabouts, at the Duke’s court the morning after her abduction. As noted earlier, the motion from the D major that ends the Duke’s aria to the E minor of Rigoletto’s scena creates a rare break in the opera’s musical continuity. It is by no means obvious that E minor represents Gilda at this moment, although she is the object of Rigoletto’s every thought. When E minor returns to begin “Tutte le feste al tempio,” the connection with Gilda, who is singing, becomes overt. 24 Powers, “One Halfstep at a Time,” 157.

472  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 13.13.  No. 14, mm. 122–​28

Conati’s thoughts on the tonal caesura between nos. 8 and 9 continue in a more speculative vein: “In short, we end up establishing a relation of cause and effect between two tonal areas that express opposing functions in the drama: the area of D, associated with the idea of crime and first stated by Monterone . . ., and the area of E, connected with the figure of Rigoletto’s daughter and first stated in the monologue in act 1.”25 Although E major and E minor have been widely associated with Gilda, Conati is alone in associating the keys of D major and D minor with the idea of crime (delitto) wherever in the opera they appear.26 In Monterone’s curse, which Conati identifies as the origin of the association (example 13.14), D major appears as a Meyerbeerian ascending semitone from D♭. The way that D returns to D♭ marks D major as a Neapolitan—​in effect as E♭♭ major, five fifths to the flat side of a five-​flat key. The Neapolitan coloration is necessarily absent when act 2 begins in D minor. The key scheme of the Duke’s scena ed aria outlines the D major triad: D minor for the first part of the scena; G♭ major for the primo tempo; F♯ major to A major for the 25 Conati, Rigoletto, 259: “Si finisce insomma con lo stabilire un rapporto di causa ed effetto fra due campi tonali che esprimono nel dramma una funzione fra loro opposta: l’area sonora di re collegata con l’idea del delitto e per la prima volta enunciata da Monterone . . ., e l’area sonora di mi, a sua volta collegata alla figura della figlia di Rigoletto e per la prima volta enunciata nel monologo del I atto.” 26 Chusid also assigns dramatic meaning to D as both tonic and sonority, but without a connection to Monterone’s curse (“The Tonality of Rigoletto,” 253–​54). Chusid’s argument for D hinges on the idea of dramatic irony.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  473 Example 13.14.  No. 2, mm. 499–​506

tempo di mezzo; D major for the cabaletta.27 The very conventional cabaletta, in a very conventional key, is felt as a return, not a departure; it lacks the feeling of tonal distance possessed by the D major of the curse. I, for one, cannot hear a reference to criminality in the Duke’s D major. When D major returns in the Scena, Terzetto, e Tempesta (no. 13), it is once again approached by semitone shift from D♭ major, and it has the same eerie quality that it did in example 13.14. It is not D in itself, but D in relation to D♭, that carries the emotional charge. In other words, the dramatic association of D is relative, not absolute; gignetic, not ontic. In Rigoletto, C minor is a key of anguish and outrage. Both scenes with Monterone are in this key, as is the Preludio and the first section of Rigoletto’s aria. The weight of C minor in the opera seems far greater than the relatively small amount of time spent in this key.

27 Lawton also notes this progression; “Tonal Structure and Dramatic Action,” 1572.

474  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 13.15.  No. 10, mm. 34–​48

The treatment of C major as a key seems rather different. Like C minor, C major tends to be a starting point for modulations elsewhere, especially to A♭ major. The move from C to A♭ occurs in the first and second Gilda–​Rigoletto duets: in no. 4, from the tempo d’attacco to the slow movement; in no. 10, from the first to the second section of the tempo d’attacco. In both cases, the link between the keys is Rigoletto’s C4, which dominates his melodic line whenever he sings in A♭. The downward shift between major triads a major third apart is traditional, as we know. That the succession C major–​A♭ major includes the leading-​tone ascent G–​A♭, a dominant discharge in Daniel Harrison’s terms, makes A♭ major sound like a resolution. In the scena of no. 10, C major arrives in the form of an F-​minor half cadence (mm. 28–​29, not shown). C major is then tonicized as Rigoletto orders the courtiers to leave (example 13.15). It is here that Rigoletto appropriates Monterone’s commanding manner; the comparison often made to Mozart’s Commendatore is apt. The courtiers think Rigoletto mad but comply, exiting to a comic-​opera coda. The meaning of the C major triad is still more equivocal, because it is an essential part of the curse motive on most of its appearances. Lawton suggests the functional instability of the C major triad within the motive (review example 13.5). Its major quality makes it susceptible to dominant interpretation, and Verdi’s tendency to follow the C-​major resolution with a pause intensifies a listener’s inclination to hear it as unstable. Motions from C-​as-​dominant to tonics of F or A♭ are routine in Verdi’s style, to D♭ only slightly less so.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  475

Much as C minor and C major appear as points of tonal departure, D♭ appears as a point of arrival. As Chusid emphasizes, five of the opera’s numbers end with a tonic of D♭: nos. 2, 5, 9, 12, and 14.28 The slow movement of no. 10 is in D♭ major; so is a self-​contained section within the tempo di mezzo of no. 4 (“Culto, famiglia, la patria”). The structural status of D♭ is considered below. Here we are concerned with the key’s dramatic meaning—​not in Verdi’s operas generally, but in Rigoletto specifically. Conati’s formulation for the meaning of D♭ is soluzione tragica, meaning “tragic outcome” or “catastrophe” in its dramatic, Aristotelian sense. This association is plausible at the opera’s end and in its other D♭-​minor movement, the stretta of the introduzione. The D♭-​major sections of nos. 9 and 10 are pathetic rather than tragic. Rigoletto’s “Culto, famiglia, la patria” expresses desperation and misguided pride, not tragedy. To regard as tragic the final movements of no. 5 (the giddy cabaletta of the Gilda–​Duke duet) and no. 12 (the quartet) seems odd; it makes sense only if one knows in advance the misfortune brought about by the Duke’s seduction of Gilda and Maddalena respectively. Here, to paraphrase Conati, catastrophe is threatened; it is realized later.

Tonality in Rigoletto: Static or Kinetic, Ontic or Gignetic? In the preface to this book, I referred to the dispute between Siegmund Levarie and Joseph Kerman over tonal relations in Un ballo in maschera. In his response to Kerman, Levarie locates the source of their disagreement in opposing perspectives on tonality, which, following Ernst Levy, Levarie designates as ontic (pertaining to being) and gignetic (pertaining to becoming). The ontic is atemporal; the gignetic is defined by time’s passage. In the realm of tonal relations, charts of abstract key relations, such as Schoenberg’s or Gottfried Weber’s, are ontic, as is a Riemannian Tonnetz. Harmonic progressions, cadential or otherwise, are gignetic: they make sense only in time and are not readily reversible. Schenker’s linear progressions, bass arpeggiations, and harmonic circuits are gignetic, but the tonic triad that hovers in the Schenkerian background is ontic. The “solar” conception of tonality described by Leonard Ratner is basically ontic, because related keys may occur in any order without essential change of meaning, although the tonic will likely appear first and last.29 Ratner’s “polar” conception, by contrast, is gignetic, because the polarity of tonic and dominant is clearest if I moves to V and V returns to I. (V–​I–​V is likely to be heard as I–​IV–​I in a different key.) Confusion over Riemann’s theory of functions stems precisely from the fact that Riemann never clarified whether his conception of function was ontic, gignetic, or a bit of both.30 28 Chusid, “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” 246. 29 Ratner, Classic Music, 48–​51. 30 Thomas Kirkegaard-​Larsen sheds light on this issue in “Analytical Practices in Western Music Theory” (PhD diss., University of Aarhus, 2020). Without using Levarie’s terms, he refers to the ontic or spatial meaning of “function” as function and the gignetic or syntactic meaning as

476  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Although none puts the matter in these terms, writers who have addressed tonal relations in Rigoletto array themselves across the ontic–​gignetic spectrum. Most fall somewhere in the middle of it. Chusid, Lawton, and Reinhard Strohm have all claimed that D♭ is the “tonic” of the opera, but their arguments differ because they disagree on what it means to be a tonic.31 Lawton stands toward the gignetic side, though probably not as far as Kerman would have liked. Chusid leans toward the ontic. Strohm’s position is less clear. The opera has four scenic divisions, shown earlier in this chapter. Strohm notes that these divisions end, respectively, in the keys of D♭ major, E♭ minor, A♭ major, and D♭ minor. He identifies these keys as respectively the tonic, supertonic, dominant, and tonic minor of D♭ major. This may suggest a cadential progression, I–​ii–​V–​i, but Strohm does not describe it as a progression, let alone a cadence. It is unclear whether the meaning would be changed for Strohm if V had preceded, rather than followed, ii. By avoiding questions of temporality and syntax, Strohm avoids a practice for which both Levarie and Alfred Lorenz, Levarie’s apparent model, have been severely criticized.32 Strohm’s essay concerns proportional relations in Rigoletto, and proportions are primarily ontic. I am inclined to read his discussion of harmonic structure as similarly ontic. Chusid’s argument for D♭ is subtler (also lengthier). Table 13.4, reproduced from his essay “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” shows key relations throughout the opera; a few “sonorities” are shown as well. The relation of each key to D♭ and/​or A♭ major is indicated with Roman numerals—​upper-​case for major keys, lower-​ case for minor. Some relations shown are diatonic only as far as the root is concerned: for example, B♭ major is shown as D♭:VI and A♭:II rather than, say, as E♭:V or F:IV. Chusid interprets keys with little regard for local context; his Roman numerals generally imply positions, not progressions. For example, C major, as a key, is always identified as A♭:III, regardless of what precedes or follows. F minor is read as simultaneously D♭:iii and A♭:vi. B♭ major, which appears only in act 1, is read as D♭:VI, although in no. 5 it is given the additional analysis of A♭:II. D♭ major is always read as I except in the tempo di mezzo of no. 4, where it is interpreted additionally as A♭:IV, presumably because the previous movement was in A♭. Chusid’s ontic orientation leaves unanswered the question of how these relations to D♭ or A♭ are to be perceived by a listener. functionality. He separates function from functionality in recent Scandinavian versions of function theory. He classifies most American theories of harmonic function (excluding neo-​Riemannian theory) as reflecting “functionality.” 31 Reinhard Strohm, “Rigoletto, un chef-​d’œuvre de proportion,” in liner notes to Verdi, Rigoletto, cond. Carlo Maria Giulini (Deutsche Grammophon, 1980), 34–​42; 39. 32 Strohm, “Rigoletto,” 39. Lorenz and Levarie describe Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde as a five-​hour-​long half cadence in E major, a key that rarely appears in the opera, based on nothing more than the opera’s A-​minor beginning and its B-​major ending. Lorenz, Das Geheimnis der Form bei Richard Wagner, Bd. II: Der musikalische Aufbau von “Tristan und Isolde” (Berlin: Hesse, 1926), 173–​80; Levarie, “Key Relations,” 143. Similarly, Levarie (144) describes the A major that ends act 1 of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera as a leading tone to the B♭ that ends acts 2 and 3.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  477 Table 13.4.  Keys in Rigoletto, act 1 (Chusid, “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” charts 9.1–​9.2)*

(continued)

478  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 13.4. (Continued)

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  479 Table 13.4. (Continued)

(continued)

480  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 13.4. (Continued)

* from Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, edited by Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, pp. 242–​45. © 1989 by The Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press. Used by permission.

A real contribution of Chusid’s analysis is his observation that keys distant from D♭ and A♭ appear with increasing frequency in acts 2–​3 (compare his charts 9.1 and 9.2). For example, the freshness of “La donna è mobile” has something to do with the fact that B is the only key that has not yet been used in the opera, the four-​measure contrasting middle of “Caro nome” notwithstanding. For acts 2–​3, the column labeled “more distant keys”—​which in act 1 serves as a mere dustbin for outliers—​relates all sharp keys to D and/​or E major, while the middle column continues to tally relations to D♭ and A♭. The only points of contact between the columns are enharmonic: G♭ (D♭:IV) is equated with F♯ (D:III) in no. 8, and D♭ (D♭:I) is equated with C♯ (E:VI) in no. 12. Otherwise, Chusid’s analysis of acts 2–​3 has the appearance of Graham George’s “interlocking tonal structures,” except that George’s analyses claim two interlocking tonics in a work and Chusid claims four: D♭, A♭, D, and E.33 Chusid gives plausible dramatic reasons for the dominance of distant keys in act 3, where, as he puts it, Rigoletto has raised the stakes of the game to include murder. But he ultimately bases his claim for the tonic status of D♭ on sheer proportion: “Appearing, then, in seven numbers and the recitative following No. 12, D♭ is by far the most frequently heard ‘color’ in the opera.”34 For Chusid, the drama of Rigoletto is gignetic, but its tonal structure is fundamentally ontic. 33 Graham George, Tonality and Musical Structure (New York: Praeger, 1970). 34 Chusid, “The Tonality of Rigoletto,” 246.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  481 Table 13.5.  Rigoletto, act 2, double cycle*

* from David Lawton, “Tonal Structure and Dramatic Action in Rigoletto.” Bollettino dell’Istituto Verdi n. 9 volume III, p. 1573. Reproduced by permission of Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani.

Lawton’s work on Verdi is multifarious, but his best-​known contribution is his concept of “double cycle.” He defines this as “a distinctive tonal plan which is repeated in another number in order to unify musically a larger scene-​complex, or else to underline a parallel between two different dramatic situations.”35 Although Lawton does not specify that “tonal plan” means an ordered series of keys, that is what his analyses show: a double cycle is a distinctive series of keys that occurs twice in the same order. The clearest instance may be seen in table 13.5, which shows the recurring series C–​f–​D♭ in nos. 9 and 10 (act 2). In each case, C major is colored by E minor, its Leittonwechselklang in Riemannian terms. The same cycle, minus E minor, appeared in the Monterone segment of the introduzione: Rigoletto mocks Monterone in C major; Monterone replies angrily in F minor and delivers his curse in D♭ major. The double cycle in act 2 is easier to hear than the relation of both numbers to the introduzione. The effect of this particular series of keys on Rigoletto’s C4 is to force it upward to D♭4, as happens literally in no. 10 on the words “Ah! piangi, fanciulla” (example 13.16), where the local move is from f:V to D♭:I. Lawton casts his net more widely, and his most ambitious double cycle, shown in table 13.6, is less convincing. He analyzes all the music from the stretta of no. 2 to the end of act 1 as a gigantic double cycle that allegedly prolongs D♭ in an almost Schenkerian sense. The first cycle progresses I–​III–​V–​ I, D♭–​F–​A♭–​D♭; the second cycle responds, incompletely, with I–​♭III–​V, D♭–​F♭(=​ 35 Lawton, “Rigoletto and Monterone,” 1561.

Table 13.6.  Rigoletto, act 1*

* from David Lawton, “Tonal Structure and Dramatic Action in Rigoletto.” Bollettino dell’Istituto Verdi n. 9 volume III, p. 1566. Reproduced by permission of Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  483 Example 13.16.  No. 10, mm. 136–​37

E♮)–​A♭. The two cycles overlap at the cabaletta of no. 5, which is in D♭ major. In cycle 1, the more complex of the two, the III is elaborated with its own subcycle, I–​IV–​V (F–​B♭–​C). The V of cycle 1 is elaborated with two subcycles, both open-​ ended, the first on V (A♭ major), the second on V/​V (E♭ major). The latter subcycle reaches B♭ major, or V/​V/​V—​V of V of V. The progression from the slow movement to the cabaletta of no. 5 is understood as a motion from the triple dominant, V/​V/​V, directly to the tonic. Act 1 ends in the key of the double dominant, V/​V, although the mode is minor when the curtain falls: E♭ minor, the “supertonic” of Strohm’s key scheme. It is all a bit head-​spinning. Although each of Lawton’s cycles and subcycles has the appearance of a normal harmonic progression (I–​IV–​V, I–​III–​V, etc.), the ascents to double and triple dominants, without corresponding descents, leave a listener stranded on high branches of the tonal hierarchy, like a cat up a tree. Perhaps Lawton does not mean his analyses to be read gignetically, but they invite such a reading. If all that is meant is that B♭ major lies three fifths to the sharp side of D♭ major there is no problem, because D♭ major follows and a listener can hear the contrast. But the arrows in his diagram seem to promise more—​a resolution, for example, from V (slow movement of no. 4) to I (cabaletta of no. 5). To hear A♭ major continuing to govern the tonal discourse during, say, the G major in no. 5, with D♭ governing that A♭ in turn, is quite a bit to ask. Suffice it to say that the claimed relations cohere better on paper than in a listener’s memory during a performance, although I am sure that many readers will say the same about my own claims in this book.36 À chacun son goût analytique. Powers does not search for a central tonic in Rigoletto, but his focus on sonorità makes such a search seem misplaced. Keys for Powers are epiphenomena—​results, not causes—​where Verdi is concerned. The distinction cannot be emphasized strongly enough. For Powers, sonorità (singular or plural) give rise to triads (plural), and triads give rise to keys (plural). Keys, for Powers, are doubly dependent; they determine nothing and govern nothing. My earlier observation that Lawton’s cycle C–​f–​D♭ forces Rigoletto’s C up to D♭, with no need to return, is 36 Lawton could have resolved the A♭ of no. 4 (slow movement) to the D♭ of the following tempo di mezzo (“Culto, famiglia, la patria”), but that would have left the E♭-​major cabaletta less well grounded in relation to D♭.

484  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Ythe kind of observation that Powers would make. But Powers would reverse cause and effect: he would derive the cycle of keys from the ascent of the sonorità, not the other way around. Conati exhibits more interest in tonics than Powers, but he ascribes no single tonic to either Rigoletto or Rigoletto. Instead he speaks of two main tonics, C and D♭, to which other tonics relate in various ways; he defines these subsidiary relations less clearly. The opera’s defining motion, for Conati, is from C to D♭. This is a directed motion, not a prolongation. To some degree, Conati’s perspective incorporates Powers’s. Aside from the issue of referential keys, it is also thoroughly gignetic. An attractive aspect of Conati’s reading of the opera’s tonal structure is its congruence with Verdi’s preoccupation with ascent by semitone. Conati’s version of a double cycle, shown in table 13.7, focuses on the semitone relation. The table’s top half portrays the preludio and the latter part of the introduzione, beginning with Monterone’s entrance. The bottom half represents most of act 3, from the slow movement of the quartet (no. 12) to the end. The opera begins in C minor and ends in D♭ minor. Within this overall ascent—​symbolized in the table by boldfacing—​the chromatic neighboring progression D♭–​D♮–​D♭ occurs twice. The overall C–​D♭ ascent occurs at two levels: from the Preludio to the end of the Introduzione; and from the Preludio to the end of the opera. Example 13.17 shows four other ascents by semitone, placed in the order in which they occur in the opera. Sometimes the ascending semitone is heard in the vocal line; sometimes it is in the orchestra. Ascents by semitone occur so often in Rigoletto that they form part of its tinta musicale. The first ascent shown, from C

Table 13.7.  Double cycle in nos. 2 and 12–​14 (adapted from Conati, Rigoletto, p. 158) Act 1 Preludio

C minor

Monterone’s entrance

C minor

“Vendetta a chiedere al mondo, a Dio”

D♭ major

“Ah siate entrambi voi maledetti” “Sii maledetto!” “O tu che la festa” Act 3 Quartet Scena e Terzetto Duet, “Lassù in cielo” “Ah! la maledizione!”

D major

D♭ major

D♭ minor D♭ major D major

D♭ major

D♭ minor

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  485 Example 13.17.  Rigoletto: Four ascents by semitone

486  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 13.17.  Continued

a. No. 4, mm. 11–​17 b. No. 6, mm. 81–​85 plus no. 7, mm. 1–​2 c. No. 12, mm. 110–​12 plus no. 13, mm. 1–​4 d. No. 14, mm. 139–​46 (accompaniment simplified) major to D♭ major in “Pari siamo” (no. 4, scena), occurs immediately after the motive of the curse, close enough in time that a listener might sense the double meaning of the augmented-​sixth chord, Conati’s accordo della maledizione. The second ascent, from B to C in the vocal line, is accompanied by a change from E major (the end of Gilda’s aria, no. 6) to C major (the beginning of the finale primo, no. 7). The third ascent, from D♭ to D♮, marks the boundary between nos. 12 and 13. The last ascent shown, from B to C in the final duet, is the only one that does not trigger a change of key: the semitone B–​C acts as 5̂–6̂ in E minor, and C returns to B. The sense of progression, even transcendence, that is suggested by earlier ascents would be out of place here, as Rigoletto pounds fruitlessly on Sparafucile’s door.

Tonality in Il trovatore Like Rigoletto, Il trovatore has spawned elaborate theories of key relation, but the nature of the theories differs for the two operas. The dramatis personae are also different this time, although Chusid and Powers make return appearances. The

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  487 rest of the scholarly cast includes Pierluigi Petrobelli and Lorenzo Bianconi in Italy; Julian Budden, William Drabkin, and Roger Parker in the United Kingdom; and Scott Balthazar and James Hepokoski in the United States. As we saw in ­chapter 1, the discussion of key relations in Il trovatore begins with Basevi himself. Basevi writes that the first phrase of Azucena’s canzone “Stride la vampa” (­example 1.1) could have been harmonized in either of two keys, G major or E minor.37 Basevi’s conception of the interdependence of melody and harmony directly inspired Petrobelli’s concept of the sonorità.38 Petrobelli reduces the focus from Basevi’s B–​A–​G–​F♯ to B alone. His principal insight is that the pitch B4 dominates both “Stride la vampa” (E minor) and Azucena’s later melody “Ai nostri monti” (G major). Azucena’s music lacks a central key, but it possesses a central sonorità. Budden and Drabkin took note of Petrobelli’s conclusions. Budden, always skeptical of tonal schemes, notes nevertheless that Azucena’s influence reaches beyond E minor and G major to A minor and C major: in other words, she commands both the one-​sharp and the neutral systems. Writing a few years after Budden, Drabkin identifies another pair of relative keys, F minor and A♭ major, with Leonora, who sings arias in acts 1 and 4.39 Azucena is Manrico’s adoptive mother, and Leonora is his beloved; the two women never meet until the final scene, and even then they take no notice of each other. Drabkin posits a systematic opposition between the sets of keys associated with each woman. To use Powers’s preferred terms, Azucena sings in hard keys, Leonora in soft ones. Inevitably, some have taken issue with Drabkin’s theory. Lorenzo Bianconi complains, like Kerman decades earlier, that to hear such long-​ range key associations requires a listener with absolute pitch. He acknowledges the contrasts of sharp and flat keys in the opera, but he insists that they operate as agents of local contrast only. That the same keys, for the same characters, are repeatedly involved he regards as fortuitous.40 Scott Balthazar meticulously catalogues the appearances of the keys at issue, counting the number of measures spent in each key within each number.41 The range is wide, 2–​118. He concludes that the associations claimed by Drabkin hold only some of the time. He also claims that the key of F, both major and minor, is central to acts 3 and 4, and that these parallel keys mediate between the worlds of Azucena and Leonora. (Drabkin assigns F minor to Leonora alone.) Drabkin advanced the idea that the triad—​not the key—​of E major serves a similarly mediating function owing to its relations to the tonic triads of E minor (two

37 Review the extended quotation from Basevi in ­chapter 1. 38 Petrobelli, “Towards an Explanation of the Dramatic Structure of Il trovatore.” 39 Drabkin, “Character, Key Relations and Tonal Structure in Il trovatore,” Music Analysis 1 (1982): 143–​53. Drabkin notes that the keys parallel to F minor and A♭ major play supporting roles in Leonora’s music, but they are secondary to the keys of the four-​flat system. 40 Lorenzo Bianconi, “Il trovatore di Verdi e Cammarano, da García Gutiérrez,” in Verdi e le letterature europee, ed. Giorgio Pestelli (Turin: Accademia delle Scienze, 2016), 109–​51; 131–​33. 41 Scott Balthazar, “Plot and Tonal Design as Compositional Constraints in Il trovatore,” Current Musicology 60/​61 (1996): 51–​78.

488  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera

common tones) and A♭ minor (two common tones). E major is also the key in which the opera begins. Drabkin wrote before the rise of neo-​Riemannian theory, but his ideas about common-​tone relations fit a neo-​Riemannian conception. An E major triad is the parallel (P) of E minor and the Leittonwechsel (L) of A♭ minor. The central pairings of keys for Azucena and Leonora are based on the relative (R) relation. Example 13.18 builds on these ideas to create a Trovatore space of major and minor triads that may represent either tonicized triads (local keys), dominantized triads (if the triad is major), or strongly emphasized triads of other harmonic functions. For example, the E major triads cited by Drabkin tend to function as either a:V or A♭:♭VI—​sometimes as both simultaneously. In each row of example 13.18, R and L transformations alternate. The relation between the first and last triads in any row is either P or SLIDE; in SLIDE, the triadic third remains fixed while the triadic quality changes. In each column, P and SLIDE transformations alternate. Manrico has a dual identity. He is doubly an outcast, first as the son of a gypsy mother and second as an armed rebel. But he is also the biological son of the old Count di Luna—​a fact of which he is unaware—​and thus a nobleman by birth. Manrico’s love for Leonora, a lady-​in-​waiting to the Queen, affirms his association with the existing order. The current Count di Luna, Manrico’s biological brother, sings in soft keys like D♭ major and D♭ minor, a fact that allies him with Leonora. The gypsies sing in hard keys, and so does Manrico when he is among them. When Manrico is with Leonora, he sings either in her soft keys or in a neutral key such as F major. Manrico’s act 3 aria is indicative: in the slow movement he sings in soft keys of his love for Leonora; in the cabaletta he sings in a hard key of his overriding obligation to his mother. Example 13.18.  Triads in Trovatore space

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  489 Instead of associating hard and soft keys with Azucena and Leonora respectively, I prefer to associate hard keys with the gypsies, who are depicted in the opera as hardy and heroic, and soft keys with the Spanish aristocracy, who are portrayed as gloomy, as they are in all of Verdi’s Spanish operas. The Count’s troops—​hardened soldiers, not aristocrats—​have more in common with Manrico’s men than with their own leader, and they sing in hard and neutral keys. Bianconi reads both the drama and the music somewhat differently. In a valuable account of the dramaturgy of the source play, Gutiérrez’s El trovador, and Cammarano’s libretto, he assigns the four principal characters to two “triangles”: an “erotic triangle” of Leonora, Manrico, and di Luna; and a “parental triangle” of Azucena, Manrico, and di Luna. The erotic triangle is “straightforward and bold”; the parental triangle is “dark and gloomy.” The erotic triangle lives in the present; the parental triangle lives in the past. Manrico and di Luna, who belong to both triangles, have divided souls; Azucena and Leonora are single-​minded. Ferrando, the leader of di Luna’s men, is assigned to the parental triangle, apparently because he seeks to avenge past injuries to di Luna’s family.42 To the extent that Bianconi admits key associations in Il trovatore, he characterizes Azucena’s keys—​he mentions E minor and A minor—​as “lugubrious” and “sinister,” while Leonora’s keys, especially A♭ major, are “opulent.” My own interpretation is closer to Drabkin’s, and it views Azucena’s keys as hard rather than sinister. Leonora’s A♭ major is indeed opulent, but as a group her keys are dark, associated with night, whereas Azucena’s keys are associated with sunlight and fire. Leonora sings in a daytime scene only once, in act 3; Azucena sings at night only in act 4. Their contrasted keys reflect, among other things, the contrast of light and darkness, the chiaroscuro that Anselm Gerhard described in Verdi’s Attila. As I have described in the introduction to part IV, I use the term tonal field to refer to a set of keys that lie near each other on the circle of fifths and are grouped together for some purpose. The concept of tonal field may be extended from keys to triads, so long as keys and triads are not confused. A contextually important triad might act as a local dominant, for example, rather than a local tonic. If the local tonic never appears, there may be good reason to count the local dominant as part of a tonal field. It, not the absentee landlord, lives in the neighborhood and should be counted in the census. The sizes of tonal fields—​the number of keys or triads included in each—​may vary. The similarity of “tonal field” to “tonal area” is intentional, but tonal areas—​ Schoenberg’s “regions”—​are emanations of a central tonality, subordinate to a central tonic, whereas tonal fields have no referential center and are merely juxtaposed. In example 13.18, the tonal field associated with the gypsies may be found in the four rightmost positions in row 1. If understood as keys rather than triads, this tonal field comprises the neutral and one-​sharp systems.

42 Bianconi, “Il trovatore,” 118–​21.

490  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 13.19.  Il trovatore, no. 2, mm. 109–​13

The tonal field associated with Spanish aristocrats may be found in the three rightmost positions of rows 2 and 3 taken together. This field is larger, but it does not subdivide so neatly into systems; for example, it includes D♭ major but not B♭ minor. This tonal field includes both keys of the eight-​flat system, D♭ minor and F♭ major. Triads and keys with many flats are always liable to slip noiselessly across the enharmonic seam, their flats turning into sharps and naturals. When F♭ major is respelled as E major and understood as a dominantized triad, it forms a potential link to Azucena’s tonal field, as Drabkin rightly notes. Among other passages, he cites the one shown in example 13.19. The slow movement of Leonora’s entrance aria ends in A♭ major with an unaccompanied PAC à la Bellini, but the first chord of the tempo di mezzo is E major, which is initially heard as ♭VI.43 The E major triad is twice expanded by a quiescenza pattern, but it proves to function as a local dominant rather than a tonic. An A-​minor tonic never arrives; the next cadentially confirmed key is C major. The shift from soft to hard keys occurs as Ines, Leonora’s confidante, expresses fear that her friend’s infatuation with the mysterious armed man (Manrico) will lead to disaster.44 The opera’s opposed tonal fields do not exhaust the circle of fifths; they leave a nonaligned group of keys with one or two flats. Because Il trovatore, like most of Verdi’s operas, skews toward the flat side of the spectrum, F major acts as a neutral key between light and darkness, whereas C major lies firmly on the side of light. The keys of the two-​flat system, B♭ major and G minor, are heard mostly in nos. 6–​7, in the middle of act 2. B♭ major is the key of the cantabile in di Luna’s aria (no. 7). G minor begins the cabaletta of the Azucena/​Manrico duet (no. 6), but that movement soon gives way to G major, a more characteristic key for this mother-​son pair. F major is the sharpest key in which Leonora sings. It is the key of her interrupted wedding to Manrico in act 3 (no. 11, tempo di mezzo) and of her short-​ lived jubilation in act 4 (no. 12, cabaletta). F major is heard much in act 3, most extensively in the chorus of di Luna’s soldiers (no. 9). The malign presence of those soldiers will soon threaten Azucena. The same soldiers and their chief, Ferrando, 43 Drabkin does not identify a tonic harmony in m. 109, apparently regarding the cadence as deceptive. This is, of course, generically atypical for the slow movement of an aria. 44 C major soon becomes f:V, leading back to Leonora’s tonal field.

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  491 sang of Azucena’s mother in the introduzione (no. 1), using the hard keys of E minor and A minor. Here Bianconi’s description “gloomy and sinister” really does apply. In his argument against Drabkin, Bianconi points out that the opera ends in E♭ minor, an extremely flat key, even though Leonora is dead and Azucena is still singing. He further notes that the opera’s final scene is the only one in which the parental and erotic triangles occupy the stage simultaneously: either flat or sharp keys must prevail at the end, and Verdi chooses flats. Here David Rosen provides a convincing explanation.45 From Macbeth on, Rosen shows, Verdi places all of his final death scenes in keys with three or more flats. Yet a qualification must be made. In the La Scala archives, Jesse Rosenberg discovered a leaf on which Verdi sketched the second tempo di mezzo of no. 14 in E minor rather than C minor, and the following Andante in E major rather than E♭ major. The leaf does not include the brief concluding Allegro, formally a coda to the Andante, but presumably it would also have been in E minor. In that hard key, Azucena’s chilling cry of vengeance achieved would have taken her to a sustained B5 on her final word, “madre” (“mother”). This is one semitone higher than the B♭5 in her racconto, the most closely analogous moment in her role; in the final version, the two climaxes share the same pitch.46 Perhaps Verdi concluded that Emilia Goggi, a soprano turned mezzo-​soprano, lacked a sufficiently secure B5. In August 1852, while composing Il trovatore, he asked the Polish composer Josef Poniatowski to listen to Madame Goggi and evaluate the quality of every pitch in her range. Poniatowski’s reply does not survive, but he must have been impressed with her B4 and, probably, less impressed with her B5. Recall that Verdi transposed the quartet from Otello down a semitone after he concluded that the high Bs “shriek too much.”47 In our analysis of Rigoletto, we examined abrupt modulations by ascending semitone. There is an obvious connection between such ascents and motions to the flat side of the spectrum. To move upward by diatonic semitone, as from C major to D♭ major, is to move by five fifths in the flat direction. In Rigoletto, the keys of C and D♭ belong to the same dramatic sphere, that of Rigoletto and his love for his daughter. In Il trovatore, C and D♭ belong to opposed tonal fields. In relation to the title character, these tonal fields correlate respectively to Manrico as il figlio della zingara (the title of act 3) and Manrico as a member of di Luna’s family and fiancé to the Queen’s lady-​in-​waiting. Another shift between tonal fields occurs in the tempo di mezzo of no. 6. In the C-​major primo tempo, Azucena and Manrico sing of war and of Manrico’s mysterious reluctance to kill di Luna in battle. After the movement’s final cadence, a messenger appears with a letter: Manrico is ordered back to Castellor, where Leonora, thinking Manrico dead, is to take the veil that very night. The reference to Castellor and Leonora is accompanied by an immediate

45 David Rosen, “How Verdi’s Serious Operas End,” Verdi Newsletter 20 (1992): 9–​15. 46 Azucena’s highest note in the opera is C6, but this pitch is not sustained, merely touched on in a cadenza (no. 6, cabaletta). 47 See the Introduction.

492  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 13.20.  Il trovatore, no. 6, mm. 136–​39

shift from C major to D♭ major (example 13.20). We saw multiple shifts from C to D♭ in Rigoletto, where the effect might be described as one of emotional elevation. In Il trovatore the context is different: C major is the key of the gypsies’ anvils and “Di quella pira” (no. 11, cabaletta); Drabkin calls it the key of “gypsy courage” and “Manrico’s heroism.” Once Manrico has read the letter, he exclaims to a fortissimo diminished-​seventh chord on D♮ (not shown). Given the flat harmonies that precede this chord, it seems more likely to resolve to A♭:V than anywhere else. A♭ major, Leonora’s key, is precisely the goal toward which the progression initially moves, but the A♭-​major cadence is deceptive, leading to an F minor chord, still within the four-​flat system. A series of deceptive cadences moves from A♭ major, to C minor, to E♭ major, to G minor, the bass ascending by step from the initial D♮ to E♭ a minor ninth higher. E♭ then falls back to D as g:V (see table 13.2, no. 6). From C major, in other words, we first move to the five-​f lat system (D♭ major). Then we climb steadily up the ladder of fifths, from five flats to four to three to two, as though heading back to C major, our starting point. Having reached the relatively neutral territory of two flats, Azucena tries to persuade Manrico to stay, her minor mode (G minor) reflecting her desperation. Manrico is not persuaded, and his “dissimilar” reply is in the parallel key, G major. This G major seems odd from the standpoint of key associations, because Manrico is singing that he must leave Azucena and go to Leonora. Yet Verdi is painting with a broad brush here. The first three numbers in act 2 form a single, daylit scene. To end this half-​act (nos. 4–​6), Verdi needed a hard key so that the F major that opens the next scene, set in Castellor at night, will represent a move to the flat side. Di Luna’s scena ed aria (no. 7) begins in the one-​f lat system and moves to two flats (cantabile), then four flats (tempo di mezzo), then five (cabaletta). Di Luna

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  493

ends in D♭ major, which is where Manrico was taken by surprise in the preceding number.

Analysis of Il trovatore, No. 3 (Scena, Romanza, e Terzetto) This number serves as the finale to act 1. In it, Bianconi’s erotic triangle—​Leonora, Manrico, and di Luna—​is fully established for the first time. It is night. In the royal palace, Leonora awaits Manrico, who is late. The Count and Manrico arrive separately and do not see each other. Manrico, alone on enemy territory, is disguised by a visor. He sings his romanza to Leonora (“Deserto sulla terra”). Leonora rushes out and falls into di Luna’s arms, assuming in the darkness that it is Manrico. Manrico denounces her as faithless, but she quickly convinces him of her love. The Count, “blind with jealousy” in the words of the libretto, demands to know Manrico’s identity, and Manrico proudly complies. The Count could easily have this rebel arrested and executed; instead, he challenges Manrico to fight. Leonora’s frantic protests are ignored by both men, who exit with swords drawn. This is one of the most adventurous numbers in Il trovatore, both formally and harmonically. The structure of Cammarano’s libretto offers a few clues to its formal organization. The number begins with a scena in versi sciolti. Manrico’s romanza, a diegetic song in versi lirici, is interpolated into the scena, which resumes afterward. The scena ends with the traditional rhyming couplet; the final word is Manrico’s cry “Infida (faithless woman)!” On this word the orchestra begins the Allegro agitato that constitutes the trio’s tempo d’attacco. The trio’s second movement proves to be not a slow movement but a stretta. This is the first number in the opera in which a slow movement is conspicuously omitted. The melodious romanza seems to take its place, although it is embedded within the scena in the manner of an arioso. The number moves through a series of seemingly unrelated keys: C major for the orchestral prelude; E♭ minor→major for the romanza; E minor to begin the tempo d’attacco; D♭ minor→major for the stretta. What musical logic links these keys? And what are the hard keys of C major and E minor doing in a nighttime scene that centers on Leonora? The ten-​measure prelude, shown in full score in example 13.21, seems at once to invite Schenkerian analysis—​owing to its stepwise voice leading and string quartet–​ like texture—​and to resist it. Example 13.22 offers two possible analyses (not the only two).48 The prelude ends with a perfect authentic cadence in C major, and it includes 48 Three drafts of the prelude and beginning of the scena are reproduced in an appendix to David Lawton’s critical edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). The first two drafts are in F major. The third draft, in C major, is close to the final version but one measure shorter. The first violins play E4 (3̂) rather than C4 (1̂) at the beginning of m. 7 (m. 6 in the draft).

494  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 13.21.  Il trovatore, no. 3, mm. 1–​10 (full score)

Example 13.22.  Two Schenkerian reductions of no. 3, mm. 1–​10

a striking Neapolitan triad in root position (m. 8). Almost everything else is open to interpretation. The strings enter in quasi-​canonic fashion from low to high; mm. 1–​4 move from C major to D minor. I hear mm. 1–​3 as a prolonged tonic triad that becomes, through a chromatic surge (David Damschroder’s term), a leading-​tone triad to ii.49 F4 and A4 are appoggiaturas to E4 and G4 respectively. 49 “Surge” refers to the fact that C–​E–​G is transformed chromatically into C♯–​E–​G. The term is used in all the books in David Damschroder’s series Harmony in . . .. See especially Harmony in Chopin

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  495 An early fork in the analytical road involves the status of the C major chord in m. 6. If m. 4 composes out ii and m. 5 composes out V, m. 6 would close the harmonic circuit with I. Yet Verdi’s long slur for the cellos and basses—​from D3 in m. 4 to either D4 (m. 6) or G3 (m. 7)50—​suggests that, like the preceding I, ii is composed out for three measures, marked by the stepwise octave D–​D and the continuous crescendo.51 The downbeat of m. 6 would thus be heard as passing. The second violins’ F4, on the downbeat of m. 4, is picked up by the first violins in m. 6, bookending the supertonic prolongation; the bass’s leap to 4̂(F) turns ii into a cadential pre-​dominant, ii6. The melody’s F4 in m. 6 “should” have gone to E4 on the downbeat of m. 7; this E is present in an early draft but not the final version. In the draft there is a clear but unusual upper-​voice descent, F–​E♮–​D♭–​C. The final version places F–​E–​E♭ in the violas before D♭ makes its eerie appearance in m. 8. The next ambiguity involves the 64 chord on the downbeat of m. 7. Is it cadential or passing? Does it begin the cadential dominant, or does a prolongational relation exist between the diatonic and chromatic supertonics in mm. 4–​6 and m. 8? If the 6 is passing, as the stepwise voice leading suggests, the larger progression in mm. 4 4–​8 is ii–​(♭VI)–​♭II, with a bass that leads into the Neapolitan triad by arpeggiation, F–​A♭–​D♭ (example 13.22a). Verdi’s accent mark on ♭VI in the middle of m. 7 may favor this interpretation, but the change from quarter-​note to half-​note rhythm favors the 64 chord on the downbeat. If one chooses the supertonic prolongation, the prelude constitutes an expanded cadence, I–​ii–​(♭II)–​V–​I. If the 64 is heard as cadential (13.22b), the prelude also constitutes an expanded cadence, but a slightly different one: I–​ii–​V64–​(♭II)–53–​I, with the Neapolitan an interpolation within V rather than an extension of the pre-​dominant. In 13.22a, the rhythm of the cadential progression I–​II–​V–​I is 3 +​5 +​1 +​1 measures (the upper-​case Roman numerals indicate a more abstract view). In 13.22b it is 3 +​3 +​3 +​1. The evenness of the latter rhythm is attractive but by no means dispositive. The ambiguity surrounding mm. 7–​9 exists, incidentally, even if one hears a return to the tonic in m. 6. Both of the analyses in example 13.22 read the upper voice from 5̂, the degree on which di Luna begins his recitative in the middle of m. 10. If one seeks a stepwise descent from 5̂ to 1̂, some allowances must be made, and my graphs make them. If the first half of m. 6 is read as a tonic, a reading from 3̂ may be preferable. 3̂ would arrive over this tonic after an initial ascent from 1̂ (m. 1) and 2̂ (m. 4). The remainder of the prelude would contain a descent from 3̂ to 2̂ (both in m. 6) to 1̂ (m. 10). A voice-​leading analysis of the entire number is offered in example 13.23; the reading of mm. 1–​10 follows example 13.22b. In the scena, a series of modulations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 8–​9, where “surge” is defined as “a dominant-​ emulating transformation.” 50 David Lawton’s critical edition suggests G3 (with double basses sounding an octave lower) as the goal of the slur, but Verdi’s notation is unclear. The slur ends no earlier than D4 on the third quarter of m. 6. I adopt this reading in example 13.21. 51 The slurring of the cellos and basses already outlines the ii harmony in the third draft of the prelude, although the slurred ascent is a sixth, F3–​D4, rather than an octave. See p. 366 in the vocal score based on the critical edition (University of Chicago Press & Ricordi, 2002).

Example 13.23.  No. 3 in Schenkerian reduction

  Rigoletto and Il trovatore (1851–1853)  T  497

by descending fifth leads from C to F to B♭ to E♭. Surprisingly, the E♭ that we reach is not major but minor. The romanza then moves from E♭ minor to E♭ major, the traditional minor-​to-​major move sounding slightly old-​fashioned for the 1850s. Following Manrico’s E♭-​major cadence the scena resumes, ending with a C-​major cadence that returns us harmonically to the starting point. Melodically, Leonora’s 3̂–2̂–1̂ descent in C major (beginning of the second system) seems to echo Manrico’s 3̂–2̂–1 descent in E♭ (end of the first system), which more dimly echoes di Luna’s G3–​F4–​E♭3 in the scena (the tenor-​register half notes in the middle of the first system). One might stitch together the third-​progressions of di Luna, Manrico, and Leonora into an overarching fifth-​descent from G to C, 5̂–1̂, in which 3̂ occurs in both minor and major forms. If that were the object, the end of the scena might have been the end of the number. The men’s mutual jealousy—​and Leonora’s poor night vision—​ensures that we will not come to rest in C major. To this point, the main points of the bass line appear to be C–​E♭–​C, but a more coherent progression is obtained if we include the dominants of E♭ and C, thus: C–​ (F)–​B♭–​E♭–​G–​C, or I–​♭VII–​♭III–​V–​I. This progression implies C minor more than C major. The way that Verdi returns from E♭ to C (mm. 79–​88) also implies C minor; the note E♭ is omnipresent. But Leonora ends the scena, as we have seen, with a radiant return to C major. The tempo d’attacco begins with a sudden shift from C major to E minor as Manrico steps forward; his cry of “Infida!,” on E♮, links the two keys. After a half cadence in E minor the key shifts to G major, where the previous orchestral music is repeated. The bass and the key have moved twice by ascending third, C–​E–​G, outlining C major rather than C minor. In mm. 129–​41 a chromatic sequence ascends in whole steps, G–​a–​b–​c♯; each harmony is preceded by its own dominant. The first three keys are diatonic to G major, but C♯ minor is distant. Once C♯ minor has been reached, a quick descent in the bass leads from C♯ to F𝄪 (m. 146), which is our starting note, G♮, in a different spelling. The chord on F𝄪 is a diminished seventh on ♯4̂, the leading tone to c♯:V. C♯ minor is approached as a sharp key, yet Verdi notates the stretta in flats—​first D♭ minor (eight flats), then D♭ major (five flats). As the summary graph in example 13.24 shows, the bass’s ascending fifth, C–​E–​G, is answered by a descending fifth, here spelled A♭–​D♭. Does act 1 end in D♭ major (five flats) or C♯ major (seven sharps)? There is no single moment in no. 3 when a listener is forced across the enharmonic seam. This suggests that the stretta begins in C♯ minor and ends in C♯ major. Anyone who knows Verdi’s notational habits, however, will know that he often uses extreme flat keys, but he never notates a number in a key with more than six sharps. C♯ major may appear as a tonicization within F♯ major, as in the B phrases of “Va pensiero” from Nabucco and the barcarolle in Les vêpres siciliennes, but C♯ major is never the main key of a movement, at least not notationally.52

52 Gisi comments that “C♯-​major examples are very rare” (“Cis-​Dur-​Beispiele sind sehr selten”). Gisi, Verdis Welten, 807.

498  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 13.24.  A further reduction of ­example 13.23

Further evidence that Verdi thought of the stretta in D♭ is provided by the orchestration. The tempo d’attacco uses horns in E and clarinets in C. The stretta uses horns in A♭ and E♭, clarinets in B♭, and trumpets in E♭. The first trumpet is used in a solo capacity, doubling much of the Count’s melody an octave higher. Trumpets in E were used at the beginning of the opera, but here Verdi uses trumpets in E♭, even where the music tonicizes F♭ major and A♭ minor. The number ends a semitone higher than it began. The overall move from C to D♭ is familiar from Rigoletto, but here the move is executed gradually, not as a sudden shift. Furthermore, in Rigoletto the shifts were almost always from C minor to D♭ major; here the change is from C major to (initially) D♭ minor. One note is common to the tonic triads of these keys: E or F♭, the third of both; the transformation is SLIDE. E/​F♭ is the link from the main key of the scena, C major, to the opening key of the tempo d’attacco, E minor, to the opening key of the stretta, D♭ minor. As shown in example 13.23, the melodic E that begins the tempo d’attacco returns, an octave higher, over C♯ minor at the apex of the ascending sequence. E is then sustained, most literally by the second violins, through the diminished-​ seventh chord on F𝄪. E then resolves to D♯, the fifth of V; the actual resolution takes place, again, in the second violins. The melody of the stretta (example 13.25) begins on its tonic note, D♭. F♭4, the enharmonic twin of Manrico’s E4 (“Infida!”), arrives at m. 174, the beginning of the third four-​measure group. Di Luna’s move to F♮, the major form of 3̂, is given considerable emphasis as D♭ minor gives way, tutta forza, to D♭ major (m. 190). His F is preceded by E♮, used as a chromatic passing tone. The vigorous response by Leonora and Manrico (not shown) will also center melodically on F♮. E has been heard as C:3̂ (Leonora, scena), e:1̂ (Manrico, primo tempo), and d♭:3̂ (di Luna, stretta). Now E ascends definitively to F. We still need to address the hard keys C major and E minor, which, following Drabkin, we have associated with Azucena and the gypsies. The timbre of the C-​ major prelude is unusually dark for this key, owing to the all-​string scoring and relatively low register, but it is the abrupt tonicization of D♭, pianissimo, that plunges the music into utter darkness. Only in retrospect, if at all, will we recognize that this move to D♭ foreshadows the overall trajectory of the number. Also in retrospect—​albeit on a much smaller scale—​we may recognize that the D♭ of m. 8 has been foreshadowed by the repeated emphasis on C♯ as a secondary leading tone in mm. 3–​6. This emphasis on C♯ is missing from the draft discussed earlier, but the root-​position Neapolitan is already there.

Example 13.25.  No. 3, mm. 166–​93 (melody and simplified bass)

500  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera As we have seen, there is much of C minor in the scena. When Leonora returns to C major at m. 89, the key regains its traditional connotation of purity and open-​ heartedness. For a moment the emotional darkness disperses. It is this affect of openness that is disrupted by the sudden move to E minor, which brings with it a faster tempo, a more active accompaniment, and a considerable increase in anxiety. We have heard E minor before—​in Ferrando’s racconto, where it contrasted with the E major that opened the introduzione. The association of E minor with Azucena and the gypsies has not yet been forged, because they have not yet appeared onstage. In act 1, E minor seems to connote anxiety and danger, with a change from positive to negative emotions. Azucena’s E-​minor canzone and A-​minor racconto will consolidate her tonal field in act 2, even as they recall the tale told—​ in the same keys—​by Ferrando in the opera’s introduzione. It is, of course, the same story they are telling, from opposite perspectives.

C HA P T E R

Fourteen

Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–​1859)

In 1858, Verdi wrote of his sedici anni di galera, his sixteen years’ enslavement to the Italian system of operatic production. After the premiere of Un ballo in maschera in February 1859, Verdi announced his retirement. In fact, Ballo marks the end of Verdi’s career as a day-​to-​day composer. It had been two decades since his first opera, Oberto. During those twenty years he produced twenty-​one operas, not counting revisions and reworkings, an average of one new opera per year. Although he would compose on and off for another four decades, those decades saw the creation of only five new operas, an average of one opera every eight years. Even before Ballo there was a marked decline in productivity. Verdi composed only three operas in the last six of his sedici anni: Les vêpres siciliennes, Simon Boccanegra, and Un ballo in maschera. Each of these works is sui generis; only one, Ballo, was a popular success. Because Basevi’s book on Verdi was published in 1859, it contains no chapter on Ballo, but his chapters on Les vêpres siciliennes and Simon Boccanegra are of great interest. I have chosen one act of each opera for special attention.

Les vêpres siciliennes, Act 2 This French grand opéra in five acts, to a libretto by Eugène Scribe, was composed in 1854 and premiered in 1855. The opera—​better known by its Italian title, I vespri siciliani—​has always inspired more respect than love. In Paris it was a succès d’estime, winning the admiration of the composers Adolphe Adam, previously an opponent, and Hector Berlioz. Basevi’s account, too, is respectful, but he finds this opera less satisfying than many earlier ones. The simplest reason is its length, a failing that Basevi blames on the libretto. He writes: “The most concise of composers, [Verdi] has become verbose and grandiloquent in Les vêpres siciliennes.”1 Basevi also complains that the opera lacks a consistent tinta, and he blames this, too, on Verdi’s need to bend his style to a different kind of libretto and a different operatic system. Indeed, Verdi had severe reservations about the Opéra: the composer had too little control; the rehearsal period was too long; the spontaneity and passion so valued in Italian operatic performances hardly existed.2 Basevi, The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, 209. 2 See Verdi’s much-​quoted letter to Camille du Locle of 7 December 1869; Copialettere, 219–​22. It is discussed in, among other sources, Anselm Gerhard, The Urbanization of Opera, 304–​7. 1

The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0015

502  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera In the same letter, Verdi emphasizes the importance of composing an opera quickly, in a single burst, as a way of ensuring its consistency, a practice that can be observed in the published composition draft of Rigoletto.3 But while composing Vêpres, Verdi complained that he was composing very slowly. To draft the first four acts required almost seven months’ work; the entire opera took sixteen.4 Adam, Berlioz, and Basevi agreed that this opera displays a new degree of refinement in its workmanship, but that refinement is purchased at the cost of a certain self-​ conscious quality, a loss of spontaneity. Not surprisingly, Le trouvère, the French version of Il trovatore, became far more popular in Paris than Les vêpres siciliennes. A good point of entry into the music of Les vêpres siciliennes is an article by Frits Noske.5 Noske argues, first, that the system of functional harmony as taught in Northern Europe is inadequate to explain Verdi’s harmonic practice; second, that melody rather than harmony often determines musical structure in the opera. Noske’s first point is true but not surprising. His second point we have already seen to be true in light of Petrobelli’s concept of sonorità, which we have had ample opportunity to explore in these pages. The chief value of Noske’s article lies in his analysis of three brief passages from the opera. He demonstrates a certain independence, amounting at times to opposition, between Verdi’s melody and the accompanying harmony. This opposition seems more radical, more studied, in this opera than in earlier ones. Two of Noske’s examples involve the unusual treatment of 64 chords, a topic that we have discussed sufficiently. I shall focus on Noske’s remaining example, which comes from the slow section of the overture. Because a critical edition of the opera does not yet exist, example 14.1 is reproduced from the French vocal score published by Escudier in 1856.6 The titles of numbers are taken from Verdi’s autograph in the Bibliothèque Nationale.7 Noske’s analysis of the passage is good, but I will expand upon it a little. The passage begins by quoting in its entirety a short cantabile sung by Hélène in the opera’s introduzione (to use the Italian term). Instead of cadencing fully as Hélène will do, the orchestra cadences deceptively on the downbeat of m. 22, substituting a melodic F♮ for the tonic note, E. The accompanying harmony is a diminished-​ seventh chord on B, the dominant note. This chord includes the minor third F♮–​A♭, an interval that has just been outlined in the melody as G♯–​F♮. A listener will probably hear F♮ initially as E♯, a chromatically altered 1̂(compare m. 19). One 3 L’abbozzo del “Rigoletto” di Giuseppe Verdi, edizione fuori commercio a cura del Ministero della Cultura Popolare (Milan, 1941). 4 Carol Neuls-​Bates, “Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes (1855) and Simon Boccanegra (1857)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1970), 3. See also Roger Parker, “On Reading Nineteenth-​Century Opera: Verdi through the Looking-​Glass,” in Reading Opera, ed. Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 288–​305. 5 Frits Noske, “Melodia e struttura in ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ di Verdi,” Ricerche musicali 18, no. 4 (1980): 3–​8. 6 The Escudier vocal score follows Verdi’s voice leading more faithfully than the Ricordi vocal score, from which Noske quotes. 7 The autograph is described in Martin Chusid, A Catalog of Verdi’s Operas (Hackensack, NJ: Joseph Boonin, 1974), 167–​69.

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  503 Example 14.1.  Les vêpres siciliennes, Overture, mm. 14–​30

504  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.1.  Continued

Example 14.2.  Measures 21–​30 recomposed

would expect this assumed E♯ to resolve to F♯, accompanied by a first-​inversion F♯-​minor chord, ii6. This ii6 might be expected to initiate a repetition and completion of the E-​major cadence, as shown in example 14.2, a hypothetical recomposition of the passage. Instead of following the deceptive cadence in this traditional manner, Verdi’s bass begins to ascend chromatically in the manner of a chromatic omnibus. Example 14.3, another recomposition, shows a sequential continuation based on the omnibus progression. The melody is identical to Verdi’s: it ascends in minor thirds from F♮ to A♭, then from G♯ to B♮, but it accompanies this ascent with three different inversions of the same diminished-​seventh chord, C32, marked with

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  505 Example 14.3.  Measures 22–​24 recomposed

Example 14.4.  Measures 24–​26 recomposed

asterisks in the example. Verdi’s harmony is less predictable than this. The omnibus pattern calls for a dominant seventh chord on D♭ on the downbeat of m. 23, but Verdi uses a simple D♭ major triad. This triad is then treated as A♭:IV, and the melody’s F–​G–​A♭ is treated as A♭:6̂–7̂–8̂. Verdi’s harmonization might be described as a modified plagal cadence in A♭. The same harmonization, with slightly different voice leading, is repeated a minor third higher, leading to the tonic of B major on the downbeat of m. 24. Thus far, Verdi’s harmonization has been inspired by the three-​note minor-​third motive that was first heard at the deceptive cadence; I have highlighted these minor thirds in example 14.1. But the harmonization, while sequential, has not been as mechanical as it might have been. The melody from m. 24 through the downbeat of m. 25 seems superficially more chromatic than that of m. 23, but in fact it is more conventional. Noske writes: “at m. 24 we are again in familiar territory, and what follows is a regular cadence.”8 Here Noske is partly mistaken. Despite the cadential progression in E major, melody and harmony continue to proceed independently in m. 24. A harmonization that fulfills what I take to be the harmonic implication of Verdi’s melody is shown in example 14.4: it leads to a cadence in B major, not E major. This is the cadence that a listener would probably infer if the melody were played without accompaniment, up to and including the first note of m. 25. Measure 26 brings another deceptive cadence but also the beginning of another chromatic omnibus, ascending once again from the bass note B. This time D♭ carries the dominant seventh that was previously avoided. That seventh chord, spelled with B♮ instead of C♭, is resolved deceptively to D major on the downbeat of m. 27. The next seven quarter notes are an exact transposition of mm. 23–​24 one semitone higher. If my reconstruction in example 14.4 is plausible, the melody of 8 “a batt. 24 siamo di nuovo in terreno familiare e quella che segue è una cadenza regolare.” Noske, “Melodia e struttura,” 4.

506  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera m. 28 implies the key of C major; if Verdi were to continue the transposition exactly, the music would cadence in F major. But Verdi wishes to return to E major. Noske suggests that the last three chords in m. 28—​triads with roots of E, F♯, and F♮—​sound more surprising than the corresponding chords at the end of m. 24, and I agree. To my ear, the progression in m. 24 already conflicts with the melody, and the progression in m. 28 sounds less natural still: the harmony contradicts the harmonic implications of the melody. It was Verdi’s contemporary Fétis who first drew attention to the possibility that a melody’s harmonization might contradict that melody’s inherent harmony.9 Les vêpres siciliennes is full of harmonic subtleties. Some, including example 14.1, point toward Verdi’s later style. Others recall earlier Italian music. Example 14.5, the orchestral prelude that opens act 2, is of the latter type. A modified lyric form, the prelude depicts Procida’s arrival by boat to Palermo. It recalls, especially in its rhythm, another arrival by boat: the prelude to the title character’s cavatina in Rossini’s Tancredi. Verdi’s prelude vacillates between relative keys, A minor and C major, in a manner reminiscent of Bellini. It is in ternary form with coda. Four measures of unison strings emphasize the notes A, E, and F, in that order; the implied key is A minor. This implication is confirmed by a four-​measure woodwind phrase with a bass line of A–​G♯–​A (mm. 5–​8). Measures 9–​12 modulate, in orthodox fashion, to the relative major, and the first section ends with an imperfect authentic cadence in that key; the final two melodic notes are F–​E, 4̂–3̂. The unison string figure then returns in compressed form (mm. 13–​14), reversing the melodic F–​E to E–​F, 5̂–6̂ in A minor. A conventional middle phrase in C major follows (mm. 15–​18), acting as the B section of the ternary form. Then the woodwind theme returns with string accompaniment. The bass line again begins with A–​G♯, but the descent is extended into what promises to be another familiar pattern, the chromatic fourth descending from tonic to dominant, a staple of Baroque music.10 Example 14.6 provides the continuation and cadence that one might expect if the Baroque pattern were fulfilled: a perfect authentic cadence in A minor would arrive on the downbeat of m. 22, the phrase’s fourth measure. At that point in Verdi’s score, an A minor chord duly arrives in the treble, but it is accompanied in the bass by G, the dominant of C; A has become an appoggiatura. Here the woodwinds fall silent, leaving the strings to complete the phrase in C major. The authentic cadence in m. 24 is not a regular PAC, but it is not a regular IAC either: the first-​violin melody ends with the descending leap 5̂–1̂, G–​C, but the second violins sound the familiar F–​E, covering the cadential 1̂ with 3̂. This voice leading is not evident from the piano score. Table 14.1 provides a simplified diagram of act 2. There are three numbers, not including the Récitatif après le Duo. The orchestral prelude shown in example 14.5 introduces Procida’s aria, in which a slow movement in G♭ major leads to a cabaletta in A♭ major. Ascents by whole step also occur in the following numbers: from D♭ to E♭ in the duet and from E to F♯ in the finale. 9 See c­ hapter 2. 10 Peter Williams, The Chromatic Fourth during Four Centuries of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  507 Example 14.5.  Les vêpres siciliennes, act 2, Air Procida, mm. 1–​24

508  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.5.  Continued

Example 14.6.  Measures 18–​22 recomposed

The duet for Henri and Hélène was described by Basevi as the best piece in the opera.11 It has two movements, a tempo d’attacco that begins in F minor but settles into D♭ major, and a slow movement in E♭ (first minor, then major). The finale begins with a dance and chorus in E (first minor, then major), but its main part is entirely in F♯ (first minor, then major). The F♯-​minor concertato is dominated by the angry Sicilians. F♯ major is the key of the barcarole sung by the elegantly attired French, who are on their way to a ball at the governor’s palace. 11 Basevi, The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, 212.

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  509 Table 14.1. Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes, act 2 No. 4. Air Procida Entr’acte: a→C

[a→C→D♭] G♭→A♭

Recitative: C→D♭

Slow movement: G♭

Tempo di mezzo: D♭→A♭ Cabaletta: A♭

No. 5. Récit et Duo Recitative: E→c

[E→c] f→D♭→e♭→E♭

Tempo d’attacco: f→D♭→e♭:VA Slow movement: e♭→E♭

No. 6. Récit apres le Duo No. 7. Finale Tarantella: e→E

E♭→e:VA

e→E→f♯→F♯

Transition (orchestra): E→f♯:VA Concertato: f♯

Barcarolle (chorus): F♯

Considering only the lyrical movements with voices, the act begins with a cantabile in G♭ major and ends with a barcarolle in F♯ major. Beginning and ending keys are the same, but the difference in spelling is not without meaning. G♭ major is approached from D♭ major; F♯ is approached from other sharp keys, principally E minor and E major. G♭ represents further motion in the flat direction after the number’s C-​major opening; F♯ represents further motion in the sharp direction after the finale’s E-​minor opening. The motion from C to G♭, shown in example 14.7, is especially drastic. The modulation is rapid but orderly. Procida’s recitative moves from C major to D minor, zero flats to one, with an unaccompanied cadence in m. 36. The next key is B♭ major, with two flats (the lack of a key signature is irrelevant). Flatward motion then accelerates, moving through a brief E♭ major (mm. 40–​41) to D♭ major as Procida reflects that he has returned to his birthplace. He proclaims liberty to a suddenly brilliant cadence in D♭ major (mm. 46–​47). The orchestra’s plagal after-​cadence in D♭ introduces the chord of G♭ major, which subtly prepares the key of Procida’s cantabile, “O toi Palerme.” Acts 2 and 3 make considerable use of F♯ and G♭ as tonics. Act 3 opens with the aria of Montfort, the French governor of Sicily and the official whom Procida seeks to overthrow. The aria moves from F♯ minor to F♯ major, much like the finale of act

510  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.7.  Air Procida, mm. 30–​51

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  511 Example 14.7.  Continued

2. It is a curious piece of musical characterization: two implacable enemies sing in the same key and in a similar tessitura (Montfort’s is slightly higher). Monfort has a clearly defined sonorità of C♯4. Procida lacks a clear sonorità, but his cantabile climaxes on a repeated, fortissimo D♭4—​ the same pitch on which Montfort describes, pianissimo, his ecstasy at the thought of being reunited with Henri, his son. The two passages are juxtaposed in example 14.8. Verdi declared himself neutral in the libretto’s struggle between the French and the Sicilians, although this neutrality troubled him. Did he express his neutrality musically by placing the chief representatives of France and Sicily on the same musical plane? He had done something similar in Ernani by having Ernani, Carlo, and Silva share their sonorità, handing them off to each other like so many musical batons.

512  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.8.  Two passages featuring C♯4/​D♭4

a. Act 2, Air Procida, mm. 69–​71 (originally in ; accompaniment simplified) b. Act 3, Air Monfort, mm. 169–​73 (accompaniment simplified) The juxtaposition of C major and G♭ major in act 2 distantly recalls the prologue to Attila, examined in c­ hapter 12. Admittedly, the differences between the operas are greater than the similarities. The Attila prologue uses C as its primary tonic; F♯ is the point of furthest remove, and it appears near the end. In

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  513

Les vêpres siciliennes, act 2 might be said to have G♭/​F♯ as its primary tonic; C major is used at the beginning, in an introductory capacity. C major returns toward the end of the act, but only as a contrasting key within the E-​minor tarantella that opens the finale. Another difference is that almost all contrasting keys in the Attila prologue—​keys other than C major and C minor—​are close relatives of those keys; F♯ major is the exception, and it stands out partly for that reason. In act 2 of Vêpres, the relation between G♭/​F♯ and the act’s other keys is less clear. The closest relative to G♭ major is the E♭ minor of Hélène’s opening period in the slow movement of the duet. The recurring emphasis on the key of E, both major and minor, is especially difficult to explain. For parallels, one needs to look beyond act 2. Henri’s act 4 aria, in which he rues that the Sicilians see him as a traitor, also moves from E minor to E major. The E-​minor tarantella in act 2 may also relate to the A-​minor bolero in act 5, the hard keys of these “Sicilian” dances a matter of couleur locale. A minor is also the key of the massacre at the very end of the opera,12 following the tradition of the murderers’ chorus in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots (­example 10.14) and the war chorus in Bellini’s Norma.

Simon Boccanegra (1857), Prologue The original version of Simon Boccanegra is known mostly to scholars. The opera is almost always performed in the 1881 revision that Verdi undertook with Arrigo Boito, the future librettist of Otello and Falstaff. Boccanegra, set to a libretto by Piave, tells the story of its title character (d. 1363), the first doge of Genoa and a member of that city-​state’s plebeian party. The opera is in three acts plus a prologue, which takes place twenty-​five years before the rest of the action. The greatest differences between the opera’s two versions are found in act 1, but the prologues also differ significantly. Our focus will be entirely on the original version. Because Boccanegra, like Les vêpres siciliennes, lacks a critical edition, musical examples are taken from the vocal score that Ricordi published around the time of the opera’s premiere (12 March 1857). Basevi hated Boccanegra. He begins his chapter on the opera by saying that he had to read Piave’s libretto SIX TIMES—​the capitals are Basevi’s—​before he understood any of it.13 One can sympathize with Basevi’s confusion over the story, but his dislike of the music is more interesting. Although he regarded himself as a progressive in artistic matters, Basevi describes the music of Boccanegra—​the prologue in particular—​as lacking in melody, lacking in musical interest in the recitatives, and lacking comprehensible form even in the set pieces. He accuses Verdi of following Wagner—​a grave insult even for Basevi. The tinta of the 1857 prologue differs markedly from that of the 1881 version. The 1857 tinta is hard, harsh, and unforgiving, like the story it tells. Basevi found 12 The final stage direction in the libretto is “Procida and the Sicilians set upon Montfort, Hélène, and Henri as the curtain falls.” 13 Basevi, The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, 219.

514  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera the opening scena ineffective. Other commentators have been similarly unimpressed, perhaps because the lush opening of the 1881 version is so memorable. Personally, I find the 1857 scena gripping from the very first note. The scena begins after the brief Preludio, deleted in 1881, and extends to the opening of Paolo’s racconto, which exists in both versions of the opera (in different keys). Writers on the original Boccanegra have invariably set out to compare it unfavorably to the revision.14 One wonders if the same authors would have found so much fault with the opera if it had never been revised; I suspect not. The best studies of this type are by Osthoff and Noske.15 Among other studies, Julian Budden’s article on the musical characterization of Fiesco, Boccanegra’s antagonist, stands out.16 Budden mentions two aspects of the opera’s tinta that exist in both versions: a tendency for characters to declaim on a single pitch, and a pentatonic quality to the melodies. Harold Powers published several articles on Boccanegra. The largest concerns the so-​called Council Chamber scene, which serves as the first-​act finale in the 1881 version. More relevant to our purpose are his three treatments of the Fiesco–​ Boccanegra duet in the prologue, in which he argues for the relevance of Basevi’s solita forma to the understanding of this insolita forma.17 Faun Stacy Tanenbaum published an ambitious analysis of Boccanegra in 1985.18 Her chief argument is that F♯ acts as both an important key and an important sonority throughout the opera. It is true that the key of F♯, especially F♯ minor, is unusually prominent in this opera, even more than in Les vêpres siciliennes. Tanenbaum also points to a musical feature that I, too, have found striking: a tendency for melodies to hover around 5̂, embellished by 6̂ as an upper neighbor. This tendency is present in both major and minor modes. It gives melodies in Boccanegra a quality that cannot easily be described in words but that might be characterized as distanced or impersonal. This is because the fifth of the tonic triad, especially when dwelt upon for a long time, lacks the color of the mode-​determining third. Example 14.9 gives several instances of the 5̂–6̂–5̂ pattern; the tonics can be inferred. Included are all three themes in the Preludio, which quotes three different numbers in the opera. The last fragment shown is from the opera’s final measures. 14 At least three PhD dissertations have been devoted to this comparison: Claire Detels, “Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra: A Comparison of the 1857 and 1881 Versions” (University of Washington, 1982); Andreas Sopart, Giuseppe Verdis “Simon Boccanegra” (1857 und 1881): Eine musikalisch-​ dramaturgische Analyse, Analecta musicologica 26 (Laaber: Laaber-​Verlag, 1986); and Albert Cordell, “The Orchestration of Verdi: A Study of the Growth of Verdi’s Orchestral Technique as Reflected in the Two Versions of Simon Boccanegra” (Catholic University of America, 1992). 15 Osthoff, “Die beide ‘Boccanegra’-​Fassungen und der Beginn von Verdis Spätwerk,” Analecta musicologica 1 (1963): 70–​89; Noske, “Simon Boccanegra: One Plot, Two Dramas,” in Noske, The Signifier and the Signified, 215–​40. 16 Budden, “The Vocal and Dramatic Characterization of Jacopo Fiesco,” Studi verdiani 10 (1994): 67–​75. 17 Powers, “By Design: The Architecture of Simon Boccanegra,” Opera News, 22 December 1984, 16–​ 21 and 42–​43; 18; “The Two Boccanegras,” Verdi Newsletter 24 (1997): 24–​26; “Form and Formula,” Studi pucciniani 3 (2004): 11–​49; 14–​20. Insolita forma (“unusual form”) is Basevi’s description of this duet. 18 Faun Stacy Tanenbaum, “Tonal Identity in Simon Boccanegra,” Verdi Newsletter 13 (1985): 20–​29.

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  515 Example 14.9.  Simon Boccanegra: The 5̂–6̂–5̂ motive

a. Prologue, mm. 265–​67 (1857 Ricordi vocal score, p. 27) b. Prologue, mm. 341–​42 (vocal score, p. 33) c. Prologue, mm. 470–​72 (vocal score, p. 41) d. Act 2, Trio (vocal score, p. 194) e. Act 3, Finale (vocal score, p. 246) Example 14.10 is a reduction of the prologue through the beginning of Paolo’s racconto. The vocal score, too long to reproduce here, may be found online.19 In the following discussion I supplement measure numbers, which are absent from the vocal score, with numbers indicating the page, system, and measure within that system. For example, the fourth measure on the second system of page 15 is abbreviated 15/​2/​4. Example 14.10 divides the scena into two parts, labeled scena 1 and scena 2. The musical notation resembles that of other reductions in this book. A slur in the treble staff denotes either a stepwise line or, more rarely, an arpeggiated major or minor triad. A slur in the bass staff denotes either a stepwise line or a bass motion by fifth or fourth. A beam has the same meaning as a slur; beams are used to show stepwise lines and arpeggiations of larger scope. A square bracket above the treble staff ̂ 6– ̂ 5̂ neighboring figure; near the end of the Preludio, indicates the presence of the 5– ̂ 6– ̂ 5̂ is replaced by 5– ̂ 6– ̂ 8.̂ A curly bracket beneath the bass staff indicates 5– harmonic motion by consecutive major thirds. An eighth-​note flag on a bass note means that the harmony functions as a dominant; the triad on that bass note always has a major third. A sixteenth note in the bass denotes a local leading tone. The Preludio begins and ends in E major. Scena 1 begins by turning E into a dominant, but there is a sudden shift to C major, F:V, at m. 9 (9/​3/​1), as Paolo sings the praises of Boccanegra as a political candidate (Boccanegra does not yet know that he is 19 http://​ks.petru​ccim​usic​libr​ary.org/​files/​imgl​nks/​usimg/​e/​e9/​IMS​LP24​559-​PMLP55​408-​Ver​di_​-​_​ Si​mon_​Bocc​aneg​ra_​(ed.1857)_​bw.pdf (accessed 27 May 2018).

516  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.10.  Simon Boccanegra, Prologue: Reduction through the beginning of Paolo’s racconto

a candidate). An F-​major cadence at m. 16 (10/​1/​3) completes the long-​range harmonic motion from E to F. After Pietro, who represents the plebians, has been successfully bribed and exits the stage, Paolo denounces the patrician party and declares his own ambition. His brief speech includes two harmonic shifts by major third, D–​B♭–​G♭. Paolo ends by returning to F, which now sounds like B♭:V, at m. 32 (11/​1/​3). Boccanegra enters and embraces Paolo, still over the dominant of B♭. The local key changes from B♭ major to C minor, but the orchestral bass does not cadence in either key. Instead, at m. 44 (12/​1/​1), the music begins an ascending sequence from G-​as-​dominant, c:V. This sequence is led by a chromatic ascent in the melody, which leads from G to the E a major sixth higher (mm. 70–​72 =​13/​2/​6–​8). The bass has a series of local V–​I leaps, but the underlying bass line is stepwise: it ascends through a whole-​tone scale from G to E♭ before resolving to the ultimate goal, E♮.20 The initial motion from E to F has initiated an ascent through an entire octave, E–​E. The arrival on E major coincides with Boccanegra’s agreement to stand for election as doge; if elected, he promises to share power with Paolo. The blare of brass at the moment of agreement suggests that Boccanegra’s fate is sealed. At this point the music that began the scena returns (m. 73 =​13/​3/​1) and E again becomes a dominant. The corruption of political life has been laid bare and the 20 The bass G of m. 44 is preceded by a prolonged F, so the whole-​tone ascent arguably begins from F. The E♭ of m. 67 (13/​2/​3) is respelled as D♯ at m. 69 (13/​2/​5).

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  517 hero’s fate has been determined. Musically, though, we are back at the beginning. E, the tonic of the Preludio, acts as a dominant in the scena, but it is a dominant that has been composed out over seventy-​eight measures. Like Paolo, E has not finished exerting secret control over events. Scena 2 begins with its own orchestral prelude, marked Allegro moderato, as though this were the beginning of a formal number. The continuation of versi sciolti after the prelude, however, suggests that we are still hearing a scena. The orchestra plays three five-​measure phrases, each proceeding i–​V in a minor key—​ respectively A minor, E minor, and C♯ minor—​before returning to cadence in A at m. 96 (14/​4/​3), where the music of the prelude begins to repeat. In each five-​ measure phrase, the emphasis falls more on the dominant than the tonic; accordingly, example 14.10 shows the passage as a series of dominants. The pattern of dominants is unbroken until mm. 106–​10 (15/​2/​3–​16/​1/​2), where a five-​ measure phrase remains on the tonic of C♯ minor and does not move to its dominant. Orchestra and chorus then lead in unison, C♯–​D–​E, approaching a PAC in A major. But only Paolo sounds the tonic note, A, on the downbeat of m. 113 (16/​1/​5); the orchestra resumes the pattern of dominants—​first A:V, then C:V. C becomes F:V as Paolo reveals the name of his candidate: Simone Boccanegra, the pirate of Genoa, known to all and admired by some. On the final page of the scena (p. 17), the harmony ascends twice by major third—​first from F major to A major, then from A major to C♯ major as f♯:V, to prepare the racconto. As shown in the last system of example 14.10, we have moved for the second time up the semitone from E to F. This time we do not climb an entire octave as before, but we do ascend an additional semitone, from F♮ to F♯. The remainder of the prologue will return, in a more complicated way, from F♯—​the key of Paolo’s racconto and Fiesco’s romanza—​to F, the tonic of the duet’s slow movement (“Del mar sul lido,” F minor) and the final stretta (“Viva Simon!,” F major). The prologue has three main keys: listed in ascending (not temporal) order, they are E, F, and F♯. Because there is so much melodic recitation on 5̂ of each key, the notes B, C, and C♯ emerge as reciting tones and thus as sonorità. These notes lie well in the baritone range, and they include Powers’s “baritone C.” It is interesting how much C and C♯ are heard, even where they are not the fifth of the tonic triad or, indeed, 5̂ of the local key. Example 14.11 illustrates with several passages from the prologue. When the chorus sings of Maria in the middle of Paolo’s racconto (14.11c), they do so to a barcarolle-​like melody in A major with C♯, 3̂, on top. C♯ sounds much warmer in this capacity than it does as fifth of the tonic triad in Paolo’s F♯ minor, which is heard immediately before and after. Changes of scale-​ degree function also occur within 14.11b, d, and g. Throughout the opening scena, the ascending bass maintains and increases tension while, onstage, we see corrupt dealings under cover of darkness. This is an opera in which Verdi seems to show his disgust for politics even before he became directly involved in politics himself (he became an Italian senator in 1860). The dryness of the musical textures, the brittleness of the orchestration, and the concealed tonal continuity help to create the musical drama. The 1881 prologue places more emphasis on the external world—​the soft breezes and temperate climate of the Ligurian coast. Budden rightly notes that a number of melodies in Simon Boccanegra outline the pentatonic scale. Example 14.12 draws together a few of Budden’s examples;

Example 14.11.  Simon Boccanegra, Prologue: Sonorità for baritone and bass

a. mm. 9–​10 (vocal score, p. 9) b. mm. 124–​25 (vocal score, p. 17) c. mm. 152–​55 (vocal score, p. 18) d. mm. 198–​201 (vocal score, p. 22) e. mm. 425–​32 (vocal score, p. 38) f. mm. 505–​8 (vocal score, p. 43) g. mm. 537–​38 (vocal score, pp. 44–​45)

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  519 Example 14.12.  Pentatonic melodies in Simon Boccanegra* (brackets added)

520  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.12.  Continued

a. Prologue, mm. 269–​76 (vocal score, p. 28) b. Act 1, Duetto Amelia–​Gabriele (vocal score, p. 66) c. Act 1, Finale (vocal score, p. 105) * from Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi, volume 2: From “Il Trovatore” to “La Forza del destino.” Copyright © Julian Budden 1978. Pages 41, 293, and 304. Reproduced with permission of Oxford University Press through PLSclear. the majority are from act 1.21 Budden’s pentatonicism is related to, and perhaps an extension of, the 5̂–6̂–5̂ neighboring motion in major, of which we saw one instance in example 14.9. One might posit a conceptual progression from 5̂ as a reciting tone, to the 5̂–6̂–5̂ neighboring motion in major, to the anhemitonic pentatonic scale.

Lyric Form in Simon Boccanegra Joseph Kerman’s “Lyric Form and Flexibility in Simon Boccanegra” was among the first English-​language studies to discuss lyric form in Verdi’s operas.22 Steven Huebner’s writings on lyric form expand on Kerman’s analyses.23 Kerman and Huebner analyze two pieces from Boccanegra: Paolo’s racconto in the prologue and Amelia’s cavatina in act 1. Both pieces are in dialogue with lyric form, but the relation to the prototype is distant in both cases. The simplest lyric form in the 1857 Boccanegra is the cabaletta of the Amelia–​ Boccanegra duet in act 1: “Figlia! a tal nome palpito,” one of the melodies quoted in the Preludio. This tight-​knit, sixteen-​measure AABA form (vocal score, pp. 91–​ 92) is stated three times, once by each character in turn and once a due. The only

21 The asterisks in example 14.12a point out “a crop of 6/​4 and 6/​4/​3 chords at unexpected points” (Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 2:41). 22 Kerman, “Lyric Form and Flexibility in Simon Boccanegra,” Studi verdiani 1 (1982): 47–​62. 23 See c­ hapter 5.

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  521 significant change comes in the closing phrase, where Boccanegra peaks on F4 but Amelia ascends to A5. Slightly more complex is the slow movement of the Fiesco–​Boccanegra duet in act 3, “Della faci festanti al barlume” (vocal score, pp. 221–​23). The melody and a skeletal bass are reproduced in example 14.13; a bass is given only where it does not double the vocal line. The principal key is E♭ minor; the text comprises two quatrains of decasillabi, with a tronco ending for each. The form is AABC, with phrases B and C distinct in terms of grouping structure but fused in a form-​ functional sense, constituting a single continuation/​cadential phrase. The eight-​measure opening period (mm. 2–​9) resembles the presentation phrase of a sentence in the sparseness of its harmonic content: the antecedent moves from I (major) to V while the consequent responds with V–​i (minor). The four-​measure B phrase (mm. 10–​13) is organized sequentially, moving from G♭ major (IIIT) to B♭ minor (vT) with no cadence in either key. Its 2 +​2 pattern of repetition doubles the pace of the opening period’s 4 +​4. The closing phrase, C, begins by doubling the pace again, with a sequence ascending by step in one-​ measure units (mm. 14–​16). The bass rhythm slows from two pitches per measure to one in mm. 16–​18; this, plus some textual repetition in the penultimate line, helps to expand the length of the closing phrase from four measures to five. The modified lyric form has the form-​functional shape of a large sentence. The two movements of Gabriele’s act 2 aria lie midway between the tight-​knit simplicity of “Figlia! a tal nome palpito” and the free expansiveness of Paolo’s racconto. The aria’s first movement, Allegro sostenuto, may be found on pp. 168–​71 of the Ricordi vocal score. The second movement, Largo, follows on pp. 171–​73. The Allegro sostenuto, shown in example 14.14, fits neither the AABA nor AABC prototypes. It is set to a double quatrain of settenari; the text given here follows the 1857 vocal score. After one measure of orchestral preparation (not shown), the movement begins with an eight-​measure sentence, which substitutes for the usual parallel period. The sentence ends with a PAC in the tonic key, A minor (m. 9); Gabriele’s E is an appoggiatura in fifth-​space, embellishing A while reminding the listener of the melody’s starting point.24 Measures 10–​13 behave much like a lyric form’s B phrase, subdividing into sequentially repeated two-​measure units and ascending from B♭ major to B major, both in first inversion. But B major is not the goal; the bass continues to ascend chromatically until F minor is reached at m. 15. The crucial ascent, however, is not in the bass but in the melody: from the initial E, the sequence leads F–​F♯–​G. Once the melody has reached A♭ at m. 15, it reinterprets this note as G♯ and completes the ascent to the high A in m. 17. The V in m. 16 is not the goal of a half cadence, as would be typical of a B phrase, but the middle term in a III♯–​V–​I progression in A major (mm. 16–​17; D♭ =​C♯). Measures 17–​19 might be regarded as a three-​measure closing phrase, but phrases B and C have effectively been fused. Because the final cadence is deceptive, the lyric form does not end in the

24 Just as there are appoggiaturas in diatonic and chromatic spaces, there are appoggiaturas in triad-​ space, fifth-​space, and octave-​space. The concept of spaces is taken from Fred Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch Space (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 47ff.

522  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.13.  Simon Boccanegra, act 3, Duetto Fiesco–​Boccanegra, “Della faci festanti al barlume” (vocal score, pp. 221–​23)

strictest sense. Although this is an aria, its first movement has a formal function comparable to that of a tempo d’attacco. The second movement, set to another double quatrain of settenari, is in E major (example 14.15). It begins with the traditional eight-​measure period, although the antecedent ends not on E:VA but on c♯:VA (E:III♯). The consequent modulates to the dominant, B major. The B phrase begins with the usual fragmentation into two-​ measure units, once again tonicizing C♯ minor. Return to E major is made through

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  523 Example 14.14.  Act 2, Aria Gabriele, primo tempo (vocal score, pp. 169–​70)

descending fifths, C♯–​F♯–​B–​E. Harmonically this is a transition to the closing phrase, which begins with the return to a root-​position tonic at m. 16, but this transition sets the penultimate line of text, “priva di sue virtù,” which would normally begin the closing phrase. The boundary between phrases B and C is thus blurred. Yet another G♯ major harmony is heard in m. 17, approached in the manner of a Phrygian cadence. What should have been the final cadence, at m. 19, is deceptive. From V (m. 18), the bass descends chromatically to yet another III♯ (m. 21, beat 2). Another

524  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.15.  The same, secondo tempo (vocal score, pp. 171–​73)

III♯–​V–​I progression restores the tonic while completing the linear fifth-​progression from B to E in the bass. The entire closing phrase is then repeated along with its couplet of text, leading to a final PAC (m. 25). Having analyzed these lyric forms, we are in a better position to understand Paolo’s racconto (vocal score, pp. 18–​24). My analysis agrees in part with those by Kerman and Huebner, who sometimes disagree with each other. Both analyze the piece in its 1881 version, where it appears in a different key (E minor). Huebner’s analysis is more detailed and will serve as my principal point of reference. In addition to the key of the racconto, Verdi changed some important details in 1881, including some phrase lengths in the final section.

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  525 Example 14.16 shows the first half of the racconto in the 1857 version. An important factor is the unusual verse meter, doppio settenario, known also as versi martelliani after the poet Pier Jacopo Martello (1665–​ 1727). There are four quatrains of text. Quatrain 1 is sung by Paolo, quatrain 2 by the chorus, quatrain 3 by Paolo. Quatrain 4 is a dialogue between Paolo and the chorus, but its second half—​the final couplet—​is treated musically as a coda. The main body of the form thus comprises fourteen versi martelliani. Verdi’s setting of Paolo’s quatrains suggests simple settenari; where the chorus sings, one hears more clearly that the poetic line is doubled. The ambiguity between simple and double settenari is the probable source of an issue noted by Huebner: the musical measure, notated by Verdi as , might at least sometimes be heard as . Huebner suggests that the musical measure is doubled throughout; I prefer to say that it is doubled only in certain passages. Verdi sets quatrain 1 a way that suggests simple settenari and  meter. The first musical resting points appear in mm. 2 and 4, supporting the seven-​syllable unit and the notated measure (recall that the normal length of a poetic line is two measures). Measures 1–​8 form a sentence cadencing in C♯ minor, the minor dominant; the orchestra contributes a ninth measure following the cadence. That there is one extra measure of , not two or four, makes a hearing of quatrain 1 in  unlikely. Kerman regards mm. 1–​9 as a complete period, AA′. Huebner calls it a “half period,” an antecedent without a consequent. Because it is so rare for an antecedent to end on minor v, I hear mm. 1–​9 as a sentence that takes the place of an opening period, as in example 14.14 (although that sentence ended in the tonic). Measures 10–​13 exhibit the 2 +​2 subdivision of a typical B phrase; the repetition is exact rather than sequential. Sequence appears at the next higher level: the four-​measure unit is repeated a third higher in the next four-​measure unit, creating an eight-​measure Monte. A four-​measure B phrase has become eight measures, ending on the tonic but without a definite cadence; the bass has returned from v to i through an ascending fourth-​progression divided into two minor-​ second steps, C♯–​D and E♯–​F♯. Measures 1–​17 constitute a complete quatrain of text and a complete tonic prolongation, but not a complete musical form because a final cadence is lacking. Meanwhile, the doubling of the B phrase prepares the more overt doubling of phrase length in quatrain 2. Quatrain 2 reaches musical resting points every four measures, suggesting that four notated measures may act as two measures of . Some passages near the end of the racconto (vocal score, pp. 22 and 24) suggest  still more strongly. If Verdi had notated quatrain 2 in , Asioli’s rule, discussed in ­chapter 4, would require that downbeats fall at mm. 19, 21, 23, etc. The same rule applied to quatrain 1 would require downbeats at mm. 2, 4, 6, etc. If we regard the chorus’s effective meter as , we can hear mm. 18–​25 as a four-​ measure presentation phrase—​a two-​measure idea in  followed by its two-​ measure repetition. What follows in mm. 26–​33 is not a continuation phrase but a second presentation phrase—​a two-​measure idea in  followed by its repetition

526  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.16.  Prologue, mm. 137–​69 numbered 1–​33: Paolo’s racconto, the first two quatrains (melody and simplified bass)

(the repetition is inexact).25 The IAC in D major at m. 33 represents the degree of closure that is typical at the end of a lyric form’s B phrase. Because almost all of mm. 18–​33 has taken place over what proves, in retrospect, to be a dominant pedal in D major, these sixteen measures could be regarded as a large Ponte. Huebner regards mm. 10–​ 33 as a single 25 In the 1881 version, mm. 26–​33 form a single phrase of eight measures, with a clear descent, 5̂–​4̂–​ 3̂–2̂–1̂, in Paolo’s vocal line.

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  527 “middle-​development” section. This analysis is understandable in light of the medial function shared by mm. 10–​17 (Monte) and 18–​33 (Ponte), and in light of the continued emphasis on C♯4, Paolo’s sonorità, in both passages. It seems less plausible from the perspectives of key (m. 18 marks the change to a contrasting key), poetic structure (the division into quatrains), who is singing (Paolo vs. chorus), and proportions (mm. 1–​17 and 18–​33 are roughly equal in length). As Huebner notes, the form of the racconto is ternary at the largest level. I suggest that the middle section of the ternary form begins not at m. 10 but at m. 18. What Huebner gets right, I think, is that the racconto’s ternary form is in dialogue with lyric form. Concise initiating and medial phrases occur at the outset, promising a lyric form of between 16 and 32 measures. The chorus’s quatrain slows the harmonic rhythm, doubles the length of phrases, and arguably doubles the length of the perceived measure from  to . The effect is to make the projected lyric form grow larger and larger, and to defer expectation of closure in F♯ minor—​ for which a PAC is required—​to some increasingly distant point. Closure will not occur until the sixty-​eighth measure (prologue, m. 204; vocal score, 23/​1/​1). The ternary form’s A′ section (not shown) falls into two parts, as Huebner notes. The first part, mm. 34–​42 (20/​1/​1–​20/​2/​4), repeats mm. 1–​9 with a more active accompaniment. The second part begins like mm. 10–​17, but the music sequences upward in two-​measure rather than four-​measure units, and in steps rather than thirds. The overall motion is from D major to G major, Paolo’s vocal line always intoning on the local 5̂; the melodic ascent is A–​B–​C♯–​D. The sequence exceeds the boundaries of the eight-​measure unit corresponding to mm. 10–​17. A final upward step, taken by the chorus, leads to G♯ major (spelled A♭ in the score) and a melodic D♯ (spelled E♭). This harmony represents II♯, or V/​V, in F♯ minor. Three attempts to cadence follow, of which only the last succeeds fully (m. 68, 23/​1/​1). We have heard a fusion of medial and cadential, or B and C, functions, much as we did in the primo tempo of Gabriele’s aria (example 14.14). The A′ section represents, within itself, the lyric form that was denied in the initial A section.

Boccanegra, Ballo, and the Diminished Seventh Un ballo in maschera differs from Simon Boccanegra both in its incorporation of comic elements and in its more obvious references to French operatic styles, up to and including Offenbach.26 The reference is to the French flavor of the Swedish court at the time of Gustav III. Although the tinte of the two operas are very different, they share at least one compositional feature: a certain way of using the

26 The opera’s setting and title were changed twice because of censorship: from Stockholm (Gustavo III) to Stettin (Una vendetta in domino) to Boston (Un ballo in maschera). See Gossett, Divas and Scholars, 489–​513.

528  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera diminished-​ seventh chord, that conventional sign of horror, distress, and unpleasant surprises. In a masterful essay on act 2 of Ballo, Harold Powers describes how a single diminished-​ seventh chord, which he calls “Amelia’s diminished-​seventh chord,” gives rise to three different tonics separated by minor thirds: D, F, and A♭/​G♯.27 Amelia’s diminished-​seventh chord includes all three of these notes plus B♮/​C♭, and it is often the focus of harmonic attention in act 2. That the same diminished-​seventh chord is highlighted repeatedly, in a variety of keys, cannot be a coincidence: it represents a deliberate compositional act. The same technique is already evident in Simon Boccanegra. Perhaps Verdi was inspired by Der Freischütz, an opera often mentioned in connection with Verdi’s Macbeth. Der Freischütz, as we know, features an early instance of leitmotif technique: Samiel’s motive, a diminished-​seventh chord that always appears in the same form (quoted in ­example 13.10). In the finale to act 2, set in the Wolf ’s Glen, Samiel’s diminished-​seventh chord is refracted, so to speak, into a group of four keys: F♯ minor, the beginning and ending key; C minor; E♭ major; and A minor. The four tonics taken together spell Samiel’s chord, which itself recurs multiple times in the scene. Samiel appears at the end, after Caspar and Max have called on him for supernatural assistance. The same diminished-​seventh chord that served Weber in Der Freischütz serves Verdi in Simon Boccanegra, and it appears throughout the opera, especially in the prologue and acts 2–​3. Although the chord is not linked to any single character in the opera, it tends to appear at times of misfortune, of which there are many in this opera. Agents of misfortune in Boccanegra are primarily Paolo and Fiesco, and our chord is prominent in the music for both. For this reason, I call it the chord of misfortune. Example 14.17 is compiled from several examples in Powers’s essay, all referring to Amelia’s diminished-​seventh chord. The remarkable thing about the chord’s appearances in act 2 is that its harmonic function rarely varies: it is built on ♯4̂ of the key to which it resolves, and it functions as a dominant of the dominant. Because this is only one of the harmonic functions that a diminished-​seventh chord may have, its consistency of function becomes part of Amelia’s personal tinta. ♯4̂ pursues her through act 2 like a diabolus in musica. The use of the diminished-​seventh chord in Simon Boccanegra is somewhat different. The same chord, C–​E♭–​F♯–​A, functions in many ways, and it resolves to many different keys. The chord is sometimes a leading-​tone chord to the dominant, like Amelia’s diminished-​seventh chord; sometimes it acts as a leading-​tone chord to the tonic; sometimes it acts a common-​tone or neighboring chord, like the chord of the curse in Rigoletto. Examples 14.18–​14.21 show the most striking instances in the 1857 Boccanegra. Example 14.18, from act 3, recalls Rigoletto most closely. Here Paolo celebrates his vengeance on Boccanegra, whom he has poisoned. The music modulates from A♭ major to C minor to prepare a C-​major chorus; the diminished-​seventh chord 27 Powers, “‘La dama velata’: Act II of Un ballo in maschera,” in Verdi’s Middle Period, 1849–​1859, ed. Martin Chusid (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 273–​336.

Example 14.17.  Un ballo in maschera, act 2: Amelia’s diminished-​seventh chord (after Powers)*

Example 14.17.  Continued

a. Scena ed Aria Amelia, mm. 114–​18 (scena) b. The same, mm. 123–​28 (end of the scena) c. The same, mm. 137–​39 d. The same, mm. 177–​81 e. Terzetto, mm. 5–​12 * from Verdi’s Middle Period, 1849–​1859: Source Studies, Analysis, and Performance Practice, edited by Martin Chusid. © 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Pages 283–​84, 295, 300, and 320. Used by permission of University of Chicago Press.

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  531 Example 14.18.  Simon Boccanegra, act 3, mm. 61–​73 (vocal score, p. 212)

functions as dominant of the dominant of C. This example includes the familiar recitation on baritone C and the minor-​third motive C–​E♭–​C, as though Rigoletto or Monterone were singing. Example 14.19 shows two passages from the prologue. The first, 14.19a, directly follows Paolo’s F♯-​minor racconto.28 The diminished-​seventh chord (mm. 227–​30) seems to begin an expanding chromatic omnibus, but the 64 chord of D♯ or E♭ minor leads unexpectedly to a cadence in B minor. The keys of E minor and E♭ minor are suggested but not realized—​E minor through its dominant seventh (mm. 231–​2), E♭ minor through its 64 chord (m. 233), which might have been expected to resolve to a cadence in that key. 14.19b resembles example 14.18, and Rigoletto, in its melody. It expresses Boccanegra’s frustration after Fiesco has rejected his offer of reconciliation. The passage follows a duet movement in F minor, and it begins a modulation to D major, Maria’s key. This time the chord of misfortunate acts as a common-​tone 28 I have modified the vocal score of example 14.19a to better reflect the orchestral score.

532  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.19.  Simon Boccanegra, Prologue: Two passages featuring C30

a. mm. 227–​35 (vocal score, p. 25) b. mm. 483–​87 (vocal score, p. 42) diminished seventh resolving to D:V7. Boccanegra, in search of Maria, is about to enter Fiesco’s palace, where he will find Maria dead. Example 14.20 shows two passages from the trio in act 2. 14.20a, the end of the scena, follows an orchestral quotation, in F♯ major, of “Figlia! a tal nome palpito,”

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  533 Example 14.20.  Simon Boccanegra, act 2: Two passages from the trio

534  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.20.  Continued

a. End of the scena and beginning of the tempo d’attacco (vocal score, p. 189) b. End of the tempo d’attacco (vocal score, p. 193) representing Boccanegra’s love for his daughter. The passage shown here accompanies Gabriele’s attempted murder of Boccanegra and Amelia’s prevention of that attempt. The music modulates from F♯ major to E minor, the key in which the tempo d’attacco begins. The chord in the third complete measure seems initially

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  535

to be f♯:♯ivo7, its bass note sounding like B♯ and acting, apparently, as ♯4̂ in a Le–​Sol–​ Fi–​Sol pattern. But the chord resolves as a dominant of E minor, reaching e:V7 in the second measure of the allegro agitato and e:i two measures later. The chord’s E-​minor key and dominant function match its first appearance, early in the Preludio, where it sets a motive associated with the words “È morta!” (“[She] is dead!”).29 14.20b accompanies Gabriele’s realization that Boccanegra, whom he was about to kill, is not only the Doge but Amelia’s father. The harmony darkens abruptly, from C major to E♭ minor, as the enormity of his crime dawns on Gabriele. The bass line moves through the double-​neighbor figure ♯4̂–5̂–6̂–5̂, or Fi–​Sol–​Le–​ Sol, in E♭ minor. In the treble, F♯, C:♯4̂, is transformed enharmonically into G♭, e♭:3̂. Example 14.21 shows the final appearances of C30 in the opera. The passage accompanies Boccanegra’s dying words—​his instruction to the senators of Genoa to accept Gabriele Adorno as their next doge. The chord appears three times in the excerpt (see the asterisks). The first is where the tonic of A♭ major is expected as part of an authentic cadence. This chord inaugurates an expanding chromatic omnibus, like example 14.19a but a minor third higher. The omnibus succeeds in reaching the next inversion of C30, with a bass of C♮, at the second asterisk. Now the chord resolves to A♭:I6 in a higher register, acting as a common-​tone neighboring chord; the common tones are placed in the outer voices. Two measures later, C30 again replaces an expected tonic, but it resolves to IV (D♭ major), its A♮ acting like a B♭♭. The diminished-​seventh chord is used less systematically in Boccanegra than in Ballo, where the scheme of minor-​third modulations in act 2 recalls the Wolf ’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz. In this respect, if no other, Verdi’s practice in Boccanegra seems almost to justify Basevi’s accusation of Wagnerism. One thinks inevitably of the Tristan chord, which in its untransposed form resolves to all twelve tonics in Wagner’s opera. Act 1 of Tristan, including the Prelude, was composed in 1857, the year in which Verdi premiered Boccanegra and began to compose Ballo. Just in the examples that I have offered here, I have invoked nine different tonics in progressions that include C30.

Un ballo in maschera, Act 2 Un ballo in maschera has received more analytical attention than most Verdi operas. Two studies of Ballo appear in the volume Verdi’s Middle Period, edited by Martin Chusid. One, by Elizabeth Hudson, discusses major-​minor contrasts as part of the opera’s celebrated chiaroscuro. Hudson’s most interesting analytical observation is that the key of B♭ major, claimed by some as the opera’s tonic, plays a similar role in each act, dissolving menacing situations into temporary mirth. 29 The 1857 vocal score has no accidental on the passing G in the fourth measure. I am assuming G♮, as in the 1881 version, but G♯ is possible.

Example 14.21.  Simon Boccanegra, act 3, Finale (vocal score, pp. 245–​46)

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  537 Riccardo’s “È scherzo od è follia” (act 1), the “laughing chorus” that ends act 2, and Oscar’s “Di che fulgor” (act 3), all in B♭ major, are indeed parallel in just this way. The status of B♭ as the opera’s “tonic” is addressed below. I have already referred to Harold Powers’s essay “La dama velata.” My understanding of act 2 is similar to his, so the following may be read as a gloss on Powers’s analysis.30 Table 14.2 gives an outline of act 2. Its four numbers are grouped into two parts: nos. 3–​5 (aria, duet, and trio), and no. 6 (finale). Powers published separate essays on each part; “La dama velata” concerns part 1.31 Verdi directs that its three numbers be performed without pause. These numbers, and only these, are missing from Verdi’s continuity draft.32 In a possible nod to Don Giovanni, the three-​ number unit begins and ends in the same key, D minor. Amelia’s scena ed aria (no. 3) begins in D minor and ends in F major. In it, “her” diminished-​seventh chord, D–​F–​A♭–​B♮ or C32, is successively resolved into the keys of D minor, A♭ major, and F minor, as shown in example 14.22. A♭ major is an important presence in both scena and aria; Powers notes that the first draft of the scena ended with full closure in this key.33 Given the tendency of Amelia’s diminished-​seventh chord to turn its constituent notes into tonics, the lack of any resolution to B is noteworthy. Gossett points out that the continuity draft of act 2 ended in B major rather than the final version’s B♭ major;34 on the other hand, Amelia’s chord plays a smaller role in the continuity draft than in the final version. The key of B—​major for Riccardo, minor for the conspirators—​is where act 1 begins; for Verdi, this is an unusual key in which to begin an opera. The conspirators repeat some of their B-​minor music in F minor near the beginning of the second-​ act finale (no. 6). B and F, which relate by tritone, belong to Amelia’s diminished-​ seventh chord. The trio (no. 5) begins in F major and ends in D minor, where the act began. Example 14.23 shows the passage in the tempo di mezzo that brings the music back to D minor. Although Amelia’s chord is not heard in this passage, the music descends sequentially in minor thirds, sounding three active dominants consecutively: first A♭:V, then f:V, then d:V.35 This is the passage in which Renato swears to Riccardo that he will not lift the veil of the mysterious woman who has been seen alone with Riccardo after midnight (it is, of course, Amelia, Renato’s wife). When d:V is reached, the timpani hammer the dominant note loudly and ominously. The D-​minor stretta follows. 30 The following discussion is adapted from my article “A Footnote to Harold Powers’s ‘La dama velata’ (on Un ballo in maschera, Act II),” Verdi Forum 39–​40 (2012–​2013): 14–​29. 31 The other essay is Powers, “The Laughing Chorus in Contexts,” in Un ballo in maschera, ed. Nicholas John, English National Opera Guide (London: Calder, 1989), 23–​40. 32 Gossett, Divas and Scholars, 602n25. The direction segue subito Terzetto between nos. 4–​5 is in the critical edition, but it is missing from other editions. 33 Powers, “ ‘La dama velata,’ ” 284–​85. 34 Gossett, Divas and Scholars, 505. 35 The series of harmonic roots in example 14.23, E♭–​C–​A, is also the series of pitches that Riccardo sings. These pitches belong to a different diminished-​seventh chord, C30. See example 14.24 and the accompanying discussion.

538  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Table 14.2.  Un ballo in maschera, act 2 No. 3. Scena ed Aria Amelia

d→F

Prelude: d→D→d (emphasis throughout on d:VA =​A) Scena: d→A♭:VA

Aria: f→d:VA (=​A)→F Attacca subito il Duetto No. 4. Duetto

a→F→C

Introduction (mm. 1–​8): C31→a Tempo d’attacco: a→D→a→C (C becomes F:VA) Slow movement: F→D♭→d:VA (=​A)→F Tempo di mezzo: F:VA→A→g→C:VA Cabaletta: C→E→C segue subito Terzetto No. 5. Terzetto

F→d

Scena: ends F:VA Tempo d’attacco: F Tempo di mezzo: A♭:VA→f:VA→d:VA(=​ A) Stretta: d

No. 6. Finale II Scena: d→f:VA→D♭:VA

D♭→B♭

Tempo d’attacco: D♭→A→g:VA

Concertato (“laughing chorus”): B♭

Example 14.24 shows the three diminished-​seventh chords that exist within the chromatic scale, together with Powers’s assignment of dramatic significance to each. Powers identifies C30 with Renato, C31 with Riccardo, and C32 with Amelia. The last two ascriptions are plausible, but the first is questionable. If C30 belongs to anyone in Ballo it is the witch Ulrica, who appears onstage only in act 1. Example 14.25 shows the orchestral prelude to Ulrica’s scene (no. 2). This music employs all three diminished-​seventh chords, but C30 is clearly the main one. There is, however, a strikingly unresolved statement of Amelia’s diminished-​seventh chord in mm. 21–​22: although Amelia is not yet present in the scene, she will eventually become its focus. If “her” chord is interpreted here as ♯ivo7, the implied key is D minor, her key at the beginning of act 2.

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  539 Example 14.22.  Un ballo in maschera, act 2: Resolutions of C32 in Amelia’s scena ed aria

Powers has traced the network of diminished-​seventh chords in act 2. This may be the most important network of pitch relations in the act, but it is not the only one. Here I describe three others. Example 14.26 shows nine fragments selected from a motivic network based on the interval of a fourth, either perfect or diminished, that is usually traversed by step. Powers notes several of the perfect fourths; he omits diminished fourths. The fourth is a prominent melodic interval throughout nos. 3–​5. The perfect fourth is the unmarked interval of the pair; the diminished fourth is marked by its dissonance. The diminished fourth F–​C♯ is present obliquely in the act’s first two chords (14.26a), but this dissonant interval comes to the fore as a malevolent bass interjection—​scored for low bassoons, trombones, and cimbasso—​between the phrases of Amelia’s prayer theme, which appears here as a quotation from act 1 (14.26b). Meanwhile, Amelia’s prayer soars heavenward on the wings of a diatonic, ascending, harmonic fourth in the solo flute (14.26c). The ominously descending diminished fourth returns, transposed, just before the end of Amelia’s scena (14.26d). Descending diatonically, the perfect fourth F–​C is the vehicle for Amelia’s first reminder to Riccardo, in the duet, that she is Renato’s wife (14.26e). Later in the duet (14.26f), it is Riccardo who sings the diatonic fourth, again F–​C, as he begs Amelia to admit that she loves him. In the tempo d’attacco of the trio, Riccardo sings the descending fourth, again F–​C, as he swears to protect Amelia (14.26g); the diminished fourth appears in a lower voice. In the same movement, an augmented triad—​a rare harmony in Ballo—​includes the diminished fourth F–​C♯ as a vertical interval (14.26h). The same diminished fourth, native to the key of D minor, appears in the bass of the trio’s stretta (14.26j). The fourth-​motive, like nos.

Example 14.23.  Un ballo in maschera, act 2: End of the tempo di mezzo in the trio

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  541 Example 14.24.  Diminished-​seventh chords, with Powers’s assignments of associative meaning

3–​5 as a whole, has come full circle (compare 14.26a). All but two of our nine passages have involved motion from some form of F (natural or flat) to some form of C (natural or sharp). A second motivic network involves chords of the augmented sixth and its inversion, the diminished third. Example 14.27 shows four instances. One of the most striking sounds in the act is the inverted augmented-​sixth chord with appoggiatura shown in example 14.27a; both C♮ and C♯ appear, with a hint of cross-​ relation between the two.36 Equally arresting is the common-​tone “German” sixth that resolves to A major in 14.27b. The dissonant chord is approached and spelled as though it were b♭:V7, but E♭ resolves upward, acting as D♯, while C♮ ascends to C♯ in an inner voice. The C♮–​C♯ motion is reversed when the original tempo returns: C♯ descends to C♮ in the bass (14.27c), restoring the key of F, now F major (without an augmented sixth). A more conventional use of the “German” sixth is seen in 14.27d, but here the contrast between D♭ and C♯ in the bass touches on another of the act’s enharmonic preoccupations. The semitone between C♮ and C♯/​D♭ is usefully viewed as part of a larger construct, the hexatonic collection C40,1.37 Any hexatonic collection contains six consonant triads, three major and three minor; C40,1 includes major and minor triads on F, A, and C♯/​D♭. As it happens, major triads on these roots play a large role in act 2. F and D♭ appear mostly as tonics. A major appears both as a tonic and as V of D minor. William Drabkin and Edward T. Cone have noted Verdi’s deployment of major-​third cycles in, respectively, Il trovatore and Simon Boccanegra, the latter in its 1881 version.38 Both authors consider only tonics in their accounts of interval cycles; both point to the cycle C–​E–​A♭, C40, as a basis for large-​scale harmonic organization. If we restrict ourselves to major keys, C40 relates, and balances, a four-​sharp key (E major), a four-​flat key (A♭ major), and a neutral key (C major).39 36 In Schoenberg’s formulation, the C♮ in example 14.27a is “neutralized” by the following B♭–​A, preventing a cross relation with the bass’s C♯. The brevity of the B♭, however, places C♮ and C♯ on adjacent beats, minimizing the effect of neutralization. See Schoenberg, Structural Functions of Harmony, 18–​19 and passim. 37 On hexatonic systems and their designations, see ­chapter 8. 38 Drabkin, “Character, Key Relations and Tonal Structure in Il trovatore,” Music Analysis 1 (1982): 143–​53; Cone, “On the Road to Otello: Tonality and Structure in Simon Boccanegra,” Studi verdiani 1 (1982): 72–​98. 39 In Il trovatore, the key of E is more often minor than major, E minor being one of the keys associated with Azucena.

542  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.25.  Un ballo in maschera, act 1: Prelude to Ulrica’s scene

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  543 Example 14.25.  Continued

Verdi and other composers probably favored C40 for this reason, since contrasts between sharp and flat keys often have dramatic significance. I have already cited Beethoven’s Fidelio in this connection.40 In act 2 of Ballo, Verdi uses a different major-​third cycle, F–​A–​D♭ or C41. This cycle governs the slow movement of the duet and, to a lesser degree, the tempo d’attacco of the finale (see table 14.2). In addition, the major third F–​A plays an important role in Amelia’s scena ed aria. Most of the prelude prolongs the A major triad, d:VA, as does Amelia’s panicked outburst in the middle of her aria, which is otherwise in F (minor and major). In the central movements of the duet, the A-​ major avowal of love in the tempo di mezzo is balanced by Amelia’s D♭-​major response in the slow movement.41 Both keys, A and D♭, are reached from F major, to which they relate as chromatic mediants. Before the music returns from D♭ major to F major to end the slow movement, the orchestra turns the bass note D♭

40 See the introduction to Part IV. 41 On the ambiguity of movement-​boundaries in the duet see Powers, 306–​8.

Example 14.26.  A motivic network based on the interval of a fourth

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  545 Example 14.27.  A motivic network based on augmented-​sixth chords

into C♯, supporting a first-​inversion A-​major triad as d:VA. This foreshadows the ecstatic A major of the tempo di mezzo. Carl Friedrich Weitzmann, whose ideas were discussed in ­chapter 2, was the first to observe that any diminished-​seventh chord shares exactly one note with any augmented triad.42 C32 and C41 intersect by one note: F. Not surprisingly, F major plays a mediating role in act 2, especially as a point of departure and return in nos. 4 and 5. As we have already noted, Verdi’s flat keys tend to have more flats than his sharp keys have sharps, so his tonal universe balances slightly to the flat side of the spectrum. The one-​flat system, F major/​D minor, plays a balancing role in act 2 of Ballo, much as it does in Il trovatore. Powers has drawn deserved attention to the role of D minor, but F major is almost as significant. Owing to the flat-​side bias of acts 2 and 3, the F major of act 2 bears something of the neutral quality that is commonly ascribed to C major: the quality of contextual, if not absolute, balance between sharp and flat sides. I, at least, hear the B♭ major of the “laughing chorus” as having gone one step beyond equilibrium, as if to prepare the much greater preponderance of flat keys in act 3. In this sense, the B♭ major that ends act 2 is not a resolution—​much less one to the opera’s “tonic,” as Levarie claimed—​but a leap into the unknown, much as Amelia’s public unveiling extinguishes the last chance for marital and political equilibrium to be restored to colonial Boston. Act 2 points beyond itself, both dramatically and tonally. It is only in act 3, and then only in the act’s latter half, that B♭ arguably becomes something like a tonic for the opera as a 42 Weitzmann, Der übermässige Dreiklang (Berlin, 1853); trans. Janna Saslaw as “The Augmented Triad,” Theory and Practice 29 (2004): 133–​228; 198–​201.

546  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera Example 14.28.  Sharp-​side sonorities in the cabaletta of the trio

whole. Such gignetic reasoning would not have persuaded Levarie, who preferred the out-​of-​time, ontic perspective.43 Although acts 2 and 3 include passages in sharp keys, these passages are more prominent in act 2, and they get progressively sharper: D, A, and E major, in that order. In neither act do sharp key signatures appear in the score, whereas act 1 begins with a signature of five sharps and ends with one of three. Sharp-​side sonorities erupt throughout act 2, reflecting the eruption of love between Amelia and Riccardo. Several of these moments occur in the cabaletta of the duet, where they are set in relief by the movement’s main key of C major. Four passages from the cabaletta are shown in example 14.28. The second and third statements of the theme are separated by an intensified outburst of the Più lento music, now in E major (14.28a) instead of the earlier A major. The coda begins (14.28b) with a repeated C-​major cadence in which the vocal lines outline an E major triad, III♯, if one allows A♭ to count as enharmonically equivalent to G♯. Soon afterward, chords of A major and B major come crashing in, with full participation of the brass (14.28c and d). Although these sharp-​ side chords resolve conventionally as secondary dominants, the way that Verdi underscores them rhythmically and instrumentally points to larger, associative meanings. Powers argues, convincingly, that Amelia’s aria, the duet, and the trio form what might be described as a super-​number, although they receive separate numeration in Verdi’s score: Numbers 3, 4, and 5 are interrelated and integrated musically in several ways, the most obvious of which, though not necessarily the most significant, is tonal 43 See c­ hapter 13.

  Les vêpres siciliennes to Un ballo in maschera (1854–1859)  T  547 closure: the orchestral prelude opening N. 3 and the concluding second movement of N. 5 are both complete, closed pieces beginning and ending in D minor.44

About the use of C32 he has this to say: This diminished-​seventh chord is the pivotal tonal element in the musico-​dramatic tinta for the first part of the act, and it even comes back once at a crucial moment in the concertato Finale in which the tone of the first part of the act is momentarily echoed. The tonalities associated with the chord—​D minor, F major and minor, and secondarily A-​ flat major—​ for all of which it serves as pre-​ dominant preparation, are not themselves the musico-​dramatic elements but are rather static musical extensions expanding on one or another peripeteia strongly marked by the diminished-​seventh chord. From a purely dramatic point of view, indeed, the tonalities may be thought of as stabilized epiphenomena arising from what I will hereafter call “Amelia’s diminished-​seventh chord.”45

Powers had earlier argued for super-​number status for act 3 of Giovanna d’Arco, which we examined in ­chapter 12 (see table 12.6). He showed how three numbers—​ a march, an aria, and a finale—​might be heard as a single unit, an enormous finale into which the movements of a full-​scale aria for Giacomo are intercalated. Act 2 of Un ballo in maschera contains four numbers rather than three, but the super-​number again includes three “official” numbers. The act follows a different dramaturgical principle than does act 3 of Giovanna d’Arco, a principle that Robert Moreen has identified with the Latin phrase crescit eundo—​it grows as it goes.46 Beginning with Amelia alone, the onstage population increases as first Riccardo enters, then Renato, then the principal conspirators with their retinue. Only Riccardo exits before an all-​male assembly is entertained by the sight of Amelia unveiled and her husband humiliated. The experience will turn Renato, Riccardo’s Brutus, into one of the conspirators. It nearly costs Amelia her life.

44 Powers, “ ‘La dama velata,’ ” 275. 45 Powers, “ ‘La dama velata,’ ” 282. 46 Moreen, “Integration,” 205–​9. Moreen’s source is a letter from Antonio Somma to Verdi (25 March 1855) concerning the construction of a finale in the planned opera Il Re Lear (King Lear). The full text of the letter may be found in Simonetta Ricciardi, ed., Carteggio Verdi–​Somma (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 2003), 157–​61.

Afterword Verdi and His Predecessors

A certain kind of reader (I am one) will often pick up an unfamiliar book and turn to the back matter. This might be the afterword, the endnotes, even the index. If you are that type of reader, I say: Welcome, friend! Don’t feel guilty. You’re looking for the answer sheet. Let me help you. Whether this afterword is the first or the last thing you read in this book, you will want to see a summary of where the journey through these pages has taken us. That journey has been complicated, and it has been linear only in the chronological sense. I have not set forth a Theory of Opera as a series of propositions and proofs. What, then, have we learned? We have learned, first of all, that one can hear operatic music not only as passionate vocality but also in terms of musical forms, pitch structures, and rhythmic patterns. This might not sound like much fun, but it has its rewards, and you really can have it both ways: emotion and reason—​or Dionysus and Apollo, for those of a Nietzschean bent—​can work together. I’ve neglected Dionysus in this book, but I have taken the emotional side of opera as given. Neither of us would be on this page if we weren’t at least a little drunk on opera. There are many tasks that I have not sought to undertake in these pages; despite some scattered remarks, correlating structural perception to emotional effect is one of them. I have been concerned primarily to describe musical structures as I hear them, and to trace the use of these structures across half a century of (mostly) Italian opera. Without referring constantly to German music, I have also tried to highlight those aspects of Italian opera that diverge from the German-​oriented concepts taught by theorists, and absorbed by students, in North American classrooms. I have sometimes privileged melody over harmony, treating the former as fixed and the latter as variable in a way that students encounter, if at all, only when harmonizing chorale melodies or writing counterpoints to a cantus firmus. As part of this emphasis on melody, I have explored, endorsed, and slightly expanded Pierluigi Petrobelli’s concept of the sonorità—​a central, recurring melodic pitch that confers coherence independently of a global tonic, which may or may not exist. Whether a piece has one tonic or several, a sonorità and a corresponding tonic pitch (assuming these are not identical) form a two-​note interval; almost always, this is a consonant interval belonging to two consonant triads, one major and one minor. These triads are in the mutual relation of P, R, or L. (The relation is mutual because the operations are involutions; that is, each is its own inverse.) If a single The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–​1859. William Rothstein, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197609682.003.0016

550  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera sonorità corresponds to multiple tonic triads in a given work, those triads share at least one common tone (the sonorità) and often two. Hence, sonorità-​based tonality is common-​tone tonality. It privileges the retention of common tones between triads and, therefore, root relations by third. Third-​relations are the result, not the cause, of common-​tone tonality, and common-​tone tonality is the result of a style that privileges melodic, rather than harmonic, centricity. An analogue in a different style is the setting of psalm tones, with their frequently repeated reciting tones, in triadically based music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.1 Relations between triads with one common tone include the usual fifth-​ relations, dominant and subdominant, but they also include the chromatic mediants ♭VI and III♯ in relation to a major tonic. These major-​third relations are of enormous importance, especially in the music of Rossini, and they give rise to major-​third cycles as modulatory schemes. The single common tone tends to be featured in the vocal line and may act as a sonorità. To link short pieces or movements using common tones is a fairly obvious way to create coherence in works that string such pieces together: song cycles, cycles of dances, and operas in which numbers are divided into discrete movements, many of them self-​contained. It was during the period covered in this book that operatic numbers were released from the expectation that they begin and end in the same key. The clearest means of delineating numbers, in the absence of tonal return, was the conventional sequence of movement-​ types—​ Basevi’s solita forma—​ underscored by the entrances and exits of characters. La solita forma was easy to follow precisely because it was conventional. Rossini’s inflation of the form, and his experimental approach to it in numbers like the Maometto trio, made it harder for listeners to grasp, making it all the more important to Rossini that tonal return be maintained as a mark of formal closure. Once tonal return was abandoned by Rossini’s successors, common-​tone relations, including the use of recurring melodic pitches, allowed for subtle continuities within numbers, between them, and even across whole operas, as with Azucena’s B or Rigoletto’s C. Norma’s E helps to unify only one number, the second-​act finale, but that is still thirty minutes of music. Just as individual vocal pitches may recur at long range, so may individual keys and instrumental colors. In Rigoletto, a dark opera, the association of Gilda with high-​register orchestral sonorities and the key of E major is unmistakable. In Les vêpres siciliennes, F♯/​G♭ major is an aspirational key—​a key of nostalgia, or hope, for better times (Procida and Montfort, separately) or of enviable but fragile ease in the present (well-​dressed guests being rowed to a party as others plot violent rebellion). The meanings of these keys and sounds depend on their contrast with others in the same opera, but they are not chosen arbitrarily: Verdi would never have chosen D♭ minor chords played by ophicleides to portray Gilda’s happy innocence in act 1. Peter Gisi’s theories of key associations in Verdi, discussed in the introduction to part IV, may go too far at times, but they’re based on something real, something that goes beyond Verdi. E♭ major, for example, has military 1 See Jeffrey Kurtzman, The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 202–​9 and 242–​45.

  Afterword  T  551 associations, and associations with the stage band or banda, in several of the operas we have examined, including La donna del lago (Rossini), Norma (Bellini), and Giovanna d’Arco (Verdi). Because he felt no need to return to an opening key, Verdi found other ways to deploy keys and harmonies for musico-​dramatic purposes, often exceeding the level of the number. This tendency is already present in Ernani, but it is especially evident from Macbeth onward. Macbeth’s sonorità is middle C, but his principal key, throughout the opera, is F minor. The witches, by contrast, tend toward “hard” keys such as A minor, E minor, and their parallel majors.2 As we saw in ­chapter 13, a similar but more pervasive scheme groups characters into camps in Il trovatore. The “soft” keys that served Macbeth and his Lady are given to Leonora and other aristocrats; the witches’ “hard” keys are assigned to Azucena and the other gypsies. Manrico has one foot in each camp, and he races between them, taking his tonal cues from his surroundings. In Trovatore, hard and soft keys have the additional association of day and night—​an association absent from Macbeth, an opera in which murder, sleepwalking, and witches prefer the cover of darkness. Verdi’s solution in Rigoletto is at once more complex and more dynamic. C minor belongs to Rigoletto and his doppelgänger Monterone; E major belongs to Gilda. No other key is so firmly tied to specific characters, but, as David Lawton and Marcello Conati have emphasized, the motion from C minor to D♭ major is a recurring theme in the opera, as is the goal-​status of D♭ generally. It is as though the motive C–​D♭–​C that characterizes Macbeth were truncated before the return of its starting pitch; it becomes a directed motion, C→D♭. What Verdi first conceived as an expressive neighboring motion becomes what Daniel Harrison would call a dominant discharge, a leading tone (heard thus only in retrospect) that ascends with no need to return. Equally impressive in Rigoletto is the role of the keynote a semitone below C. I am not aware of another opera in which Verdi saves a key to maximum effect the way he saves B major for “La donna è mobile.” While the Duke’s act 3 canzone shares the central vocal octave F♯3–​F♯4 with his act 2 aria (slow movement in G♭ major, cabaletta in D major), the B major of “La donna è mobile” sounds startlingly fresh, an effect that must be ascribed to the near-​total absence, thus far, of this key and this tonic in an opera that has used almost every other. It is unclear from where, besides his own imagination, Verdi derived the inspiration to use associative keys and chords as he did, but Meyerbeer must rank as a suspect for reasons described in this book. Associative tonality was practically a German specialty, characteristic of Meyerbeer and of Weber and Spohr before him. Yet specific key-​associations derived from German music are rarely obvious in Verdi’s operas. His contrast of C minor with C major in Attila surely had its origins in Haydn’s Creation, a work that Verdi famously conducted in his youth. There is a substantial literature on Macbeth, an opera that I have not treated extensively. For analytical perspectives see, inter alia, Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 1:311–​12; Elliott Antokoletz, “Verdi’s Dramatic Use of Harmony and Tonality in Macbeth,” In Theory Only 4, no. 6 (November/​December 1978): 17–​28; and the essays by Martin Chusid and Daniel Sabbeth in Verdi’s Macbeth: A Sourcebook, ed. David Rosen and Andrew Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 2

552  T  The Musical Language of Italian Opera But Verdi did not (for example) associate B minor with evil as Spohr and Meyerbeer had done. What may have derived from German sources, and from Meyerbeer in particular, is Verdi’s tendency to organize keys around interval cycles, although there are precedents for this in Rossini’s Zelmira and Guillaume Tell. The degree to which Tell foreshadows future developments in Italian opera has not been sufficiently appreciated, in part because composers reacted more overtly to Robert le diable and Les Huguenots. Tell’s mutilation, both before and after its premiere, has not helped. This sprawling, unwieldy work marries at least two distinct tonal strategies. The first is the trio-​of-​keys technique, used also by Bellini and Donizetti, in which a minor key is linked to its parallel and relative majors; this strategy is most evident in act 1. The second is the use of major-​third cycles, which dominate act 4. Acts 2 and 3 use both strategies. Although certain keys recur frequently in Tell, none seems to possess a stable meaning throughout the opera beyond very general associations pertaining to “hard” and “soft” keys. Even G major, used in act 1 for its pastoral connotations, is not immune: it returns in act 3 as the key in which Austrian soldiers force the Swiss to sing and dance for them, and in which they dance themselves. Lest one conclude that G major is reserved for dancing commoners, it is also prominent in the act 3 aria of the Habsburg princess Mathilde, who does not dance with commoners, at least not in public. Her trio of keys, G/​e/​E, is the same used in act 1, one of several correspondences between these acts. Tell is nothing if not heterogeneous. We have also explored the use of associative harmony, especially that involving the diminished-​seventh chord. By the late nineteenth century, composers and critics distanced themselves from the diminished seventh, which had come to seem hackneyed. Alfredo Casella wrote this in 1924: It is difficult to calculate how many robberies, rapes, vows, perjuries, assassinations, broken marriages, storms, capital executions and violent deaths of every type, etc., etc., have found their natural expression in this famous chord—​for more than a century, until Wagner replaced it with the [half-​diminished] seventh.3

But the diminished-​seventh chord is more than a cliché in ottocento opera. In Rossini’s Semiramide, and especially in Verdi’s operas of the 1850s, specific diminished-​seventh chords—​or, to put it differently, specific minor-​third cycles, used as simultaneities—​ are used as agents of recall and, in Verdi’s case, characterization. The minor-​third cycle C30 (C–​E♭–​F♯–​A) acts as an emblem of misfortune throughout Rigoletto and Simon Boccanegra, associated primarily but not exclusively with the title characters. For Un ballo in maschera, Harold Powers

3 “È difficile calcolare quanti furti, stupri, giuramenti e spergiuri, assassinii, mancati matrimoni, temporali, esecuzioni capitali e morti violente di ogni genere, ecc., ecc. abbiano trovato in quel celebre accordo—​per oltre un secolo—​la loro naturale espressione—​finchè Wagner lo sostituì con quello di settima.” Alfredo Casella, “Problemi sonori odierni,” La prora 1 (February 1924): 8–​9. English translation Alfred Casella, “Tone-​Problems of Today,” Musical Quarterly 10 (1924). I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for this quotation.

  Afterword  T  553

convincingly denominated C32 (D–​F–​A♭–​B) “Amelia’s diminished-​seventh chord.” In act 2 of Ballo, C32 governs not only associative harmony but also the modulatory scheme: the chord is, so to speak, composed out. Verdi’s model for this procedure could have been Weber’s Der Freischütz, an opera known in Italy because it was popular in Paris.4 Weber treats C30, from which Samiel’s leitmotif is formed, as the harmonic background of the Wolf ’s Glen scene. Basevi, who owned a French edition of the score, mentions Der Freischütz in connection with Ernani and Macbeth, though without referring to the Wolf ’s Glen.5 Between Rossini and Verdi, one finds a variety of solutions to problems of long-​r ange musical structuring. In ­chapter 11 we examined the final acts of Mercadante’s Il giuramento and Donizetti’s La favorite and Maria di Rohan. Act 4 of La favorite is unified through musical continuity, thematic recurrence, a sonorità (Fernand’s E), and a major-​third cycle of keys in which one key, C major, is central. The final modulation away from C major is dramatically motivated, as Léonor’s death takes the music to F minor and B ♭ minor. This death scene foreshadows many of Verdi’s, including the endings to Luisa Miller (E ♭ minor), Rigoletto (D ♭ minor), Il trovatore (E ♭ minor), La traviata (D ♭ minor), Simon Boccanegra (A ♭ minor), and Un ballo in maschera (B ♭ minor). 6 The final numbers in Maria di Rohan also employ a major-​t hird cycle, G ♭ –​D –​B ♭ , which helps the ending on D: ♭ VI seem better motivated than it might. The chromatic bent of Rossini and Meyerbeer finds its opposite in the diatonicism of Bellini and of the popular element in Italian opera—​the element that produced all those canzoni, romanze, and cabalettas in popular style. Where the romanza and Bellini are concerned, diatonic Italian melody sometimes carries a whiff of the old modes, that alter Duft aus Märchenzeit. Bellini’s early death prevents us from seeing where the style of La straniera and I Capuleti might have led him; his final opera, I puritani, suggests a different direction, one closer to Donizetti. Yet there is much that Verdi learned from Bellini.7 I can do no better than to end this book where I started it, with the Anvil Chorus from Il trovatore. Verdi’s Coro di Zingari e Canzone illustrates much of what this book has revealed. The piece has almost everything except la solita forma. Although overwhelmingly diatonic, it begins and ends in different keys. It is unified more by melodic pitches than by keys or tonics. Its phrases are mostly end-​accented, so much so that a casual listener may be surprised to see where Verdi places his bar lines in the opening strains. It is, in a word, strange, especially to those reared on German music. Therefore, if you have not done so already, please turn to ­chapter 1. 4 Castil-​Blaze’s French adaptation of Der Freischütz, Robin des bois, premiered in 1824. From 1830 onward, the opera was performed in a French version with recitatives by Berlioz. 5 Basevi, The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, 55 and 92. 6 David Rosen, “How Verdi’s Serious Operas End.” 7 See Friedrich Lippmann, “Verdi e Bellini,” in Atti del Io Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani (Parma: Istituto di Studi Verdiani, 1969), 184–​96.

SE L E C T E D B I B L IO G R A P H Y

Abbate, Carolyn, and Roger Parker, eds. Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Ashbrook, William. Donizetti and His Operas. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Asioli, Bonifazio. Il maestro di composizione. 4 vols. Milan: Ricordi, [n.d.]. Vol. 4 incorporates Antonio Coli’s Vita di Bonifazio Asioli da Correggio. Milan: Ricordi, 1834. Baini, Giuseppe. Saggio sopra l’identità de’ ritmi musicale e poetico. Florence, 1820. Balthazar, Scott L. “Evolving Conventions in Italian Serious Opera: Scene Structure in the Works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, 1810–​1850.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1985. Balthazar, Scott L. “The Forms of Set Pieces.” In The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, edited by Scott Balthazar, 49–​68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Baragwanath, Nicholas. The Italian Traditions and Puccini. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Basevi, Abramo. Introduzione ad un nuovo sistema d’armonia. Florence, 1862. Basevi, Abramo. Studi sull’ armonia. Florence, 1865. Basevi, Abramo. Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi. Florence, 1859. Translated by Edward Schneider and Stefano Castelvecchi as The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Stefano Castelvecchi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Bellini, Vincenzo. Edizione critica delle opere di Vincenzo Bellini. Edited by Fabrizio Della Seta, Alessandro Roccatagliati, and Luca Zoppelli. Milan: Ricordi, 2003–​. Bianconi, Lorenzo. “‘Confusi e stupidi’: di uno stupefacente (e banalissimo) dispositivo metrico.” In Gioachino Rossini 1792–​1992: il testo e la scena, edited by Paolo Fabbri, 129–​ 61. Pesaro: Fondazione Rossini, 1994. Budden, Julian. The Operas of Verdi. 3 vols. London: Praeger, 1973–​1981. Christensen, Thomas. Stores of Tonality in the Age of François-​Joseph Fétis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Chusid, Martin. A Catalog of Verdi’s Operas. Hackensack, NJ: Joseph Boonin, 1974. Chusid, Martin. “Rigoletto and Monterone: A Study in Musical Dramaturgy.” In IMS Report 1972, edited by Henrik Glahn et al., 1:325–​36. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Hansen, 1974. Reprinted in Bollettino “Verdi” 3, no. 9 (1982): 1544–​58. Chusid, Martin. “The Tonality of Rigoletto.” In Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, ed. Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 241–​61. Chusid, Martin. Verdi’s “Il trovatore”: The Quintessential Italian Melodrama. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012.

556  T  Selected Bibliography Chusid, Martin, ed. Verdi’s Middle Period, 1849–​ 1859: Source Studies, Analysis, and Performance Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Cohn, Richard. Audacious Euphony: Chromatic Harmony and the Triad’s Second Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Conati, Marcello. Rigoletto: Un’analisi drammatico-​musicale. Venice: Marsilio, 1992. Della Seta, Fabrizio. “Ernani: The ‘Carlo Quinto’ Act.” In Della Seta, Not without Madness: Perspectives on Opera, translated by Mark Weir, 24–​37. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Originally published as “L’atto di Carlo Quinto” in Bollettino “Verdi” 4, no. 10 (1987): 161–​75. Donizetti, Gaetano. Edizione critica delle opere di Gaetano Donizetti. Edited by Gabriele Dotto and Roger Parker. Milan: Ricordi, 1994–​. Drabkin, William. “Character, Key Relations and Tonal Structure in Il trovatore.” Music Analysis 1 (1982): 143–​53. Fabbri, Paolo. “Metrical and Formal Organization.” In Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth, edited by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 151–​219. Translated by Kenneth Chalmers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Also published as Metro e canto nell’opera italiana. Turin: EDT, 2007. Federhofer, Hellmut. Heinrich Schenker: nach Tagebüchern und Briefen in der Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection. Hildesheim: Olms, 1985. Fétis, François-​Joseph. Traité complet de la théorie et de la pratique de l’harmonie. Paris, 1844 and later editions. Translated by Peter M. Landey as Complete Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Harmony. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2008. Gerhard, Anselm. “Verdi’s Attila: A Study in Chiaroscuro.” Cambridge Opera Journal 21 (2010): 279–​89. Giger, Andreas. Verdi and the French Aesthetic: Verse, Stanza, and Melody in Nineteenth-​ Century Opera. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Gisi, Peter. Verdis Welten: Neuinterpretation der Werke im Spiegel der Tonarten. Bern: Peter Lang, 2013. Gossett, Philip. Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Gossett, Philip. “The Operas of Rossini: Problems of Textual Criticism in Nineteenth-​ Century Opera.” PhD diss., Princeton University, 1970. Gossett, Philip, and Charles Rosen, eds. Early Romantic Opera: Bellini, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, & Grand Opera in Paris. 71 vols. New York: Garland Press, 1978–​1983. Harrison, Daniel. Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Huebner, Steven. “Italianate Duets in Meyerbeer’s Grand Operas.” Journal of Musicological Research 8 (1989): 203–​58. Huebner, Steven. “Lyric Form in ‘Ottocento’ Opera.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 117 (1992): 123–​47. Huebner, Steven. Les opéras de Verdi. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2017. Huebner, Steven. “Structural Coherence.” In The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, edited by Scott Balthazar, 139–​53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Kerman, Joseph. “Lyric Form and Flexibility in Simon Boccanegra.” Studi verdiani 1 (1982): 47–​62. Kerman, Joseph. “Viewpoint.” 19th-​Century Music 2 (1978): 186–​91. Kopp, David. Chromatic Transformations in Nineteenth-​ Century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Selected Bibliography  T  557 Kopp, David. “A Comprehensive Theory of Chromatic Mediant Relations in Mid-​ Nineteenth-​Century Music.” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1995. Lawton, David. “Tonal Structure and Dramatic Action in Rigoletto.” Bollettino “Verdi” 3, no. 9 (1982): 1559–​81. Lawton, David. “Tonality and Drama in Verdi’s Early Operas.” PhD diss., University of California–​Berkeley, 1973. Lawton, David, and David Rosen. “Verdi’s Non-​Definitive Revisions: The Early Operas.” In Atti del IIIo Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani, 189–​237. Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1974. Lerdahl, Fred, and Ray Jackendoff. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983. Levarie, Siegmund. “Key Relations in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.” 19th-​Century Music 2 (1978): 143–​47. Lippmann, Friedrich. “Der italienische Vers und der musikalische Rhythmus: Zum Verhältnis von Vers und Musik in der italienischen Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts, mit einem Rückblick auf die 2. Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts.” Analecta musicologica 12, 253–​ 369; 14, 324–​410; 15, 298–​333. Cologne: Arno Volk, 1973–​1975. Lippmann, Friedrich. Vincenzo Bellini und die italienische Opera seria seiner Zeit. Analecta musicologica 6. Cologne: Böhlau, 1969. Marvin, Roberta Montemorra. Verdi the Student—​ Verdi the Teacher. Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 2010. Mathew, Nicholas, and Benjamin Walton, eds. The Invention of Beethoven and Rossini: Historiography, Analysis, Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Meyerbeer, Giacomo. Werkausgabe. Edited by Jürgen Selk and Sieghart Döhring. Munich: Ricordi, 2010–​. Momigny, Jérôme-​Joseph de. La seule vraie théorie de la musique. Paris, 1821. Translated by E. M. E. Santerre as La sola e vera teorica della musica. Bologna, 1823. Moreen, Robert. “Integration of Text Forms and Musical Forms in Verdi’s Early Operas.” PhD diss., Princeton University, 1975. Noske, Frits. “Melodia e struttura in ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ di Verdi.” Ricerche musicali 18, no. 4 (1980): 3–​8. Noske, Frits. The Signifier and the Signified: Studies in the Operas of Mozart and Verdi. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977. Paperback edn., New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Osthoff, Wolfgang. “The Musical Characterization of Gilda.” Bollettino “Verdi” 3, no. 8 (1973): 1275–​1314. Pagannone, Giorgio. “Aspetti della melodia verdiana: ‘Periodo’ e ‘Barform’ a confronto.” Studi verdiani 12 (1997): 48–​66. Pagannone, Giorgio. “Mobilità strutturale della lyric form: Sintassi verbale e sintassi musicale nel melodramma italiano del primo Ottocento.” Analisi 7, no. 20 (May 1996): 2–​17. Petrobelli, Pierluigi. “Per un’esegesi della struttura drammatica del Trovatore.” In Atti del IIIo Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani, 387–​400. Translated by William Drabkin as “Towards an Explanation of the Dramatic Structure of Il trovatore.” Music Analysis 1 (1982): 129–​41. Pospíšil, Milan. “Verdi—​‘Harmoniste à la façon de Meyerbeer’?” In Giacomo Meyerbeer—​ Musik als Welterfahrung: Heinz Becker zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Sieghart Döhring and Jürgen Schläder, 199–​222. Munich: Ricordi, 1995.

558  T  Selected Bibliography Powers, Harold S. “‘La dama velata’: Act II of Un ballo in maschera.” In Verdi’s Middle Period, 1849–​1859: Source Studies, Analysis, and Performance Practice, ed. Martin Chusid, 273–​ 336. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Powers, Harold S. “Il ‘do del baritono’ nel ‘gioco delle parti’ verdiano.” In Opera e libretto II, 267–​81. Studi di musica veneta. Florence: Olschki, 1993. Powers, Harold S. “One Halfstep at a Time: Tonal Transposition and ‘Split Association’ in Italian Opera.” Cambridge Opera Journal 7 (1995): 135–​64. Powers, Harold S. “‘La solita forma’ and ‘The Uses of Convention’.” Acta musicologica 59 (1987): 65–​90. Pulignano, Ernesto. “Il giuramento” di Rossi e Mercadante. Turin: EDT, 2007. Reicha, Traité de mélodie. Paris, 1814. Translated by Peter M. Landey as Treatise on Melody. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2000. Riemann, Hugo. Handbuch der Harmonielehre. 6th ed. Leipzig, 1917. Rosen, David. “How Verdi’s Serious Operas End.” Verdi Newsletter 20 (1992): 9–​15. Rossini, Gioachino. Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini. Edited by Philip Gossett and Ilaria Narici. Pesaro: Fondazione Rossini, in collaboration with Casa Ricordi (Milan), 1979–​. Rothstein, William. “Common-​tone Tonality in Italian Romantic Opera: An Introduction.” Music Theory Online 14, no. 1 (2008). Rothstein, William. “Meter and Text-​ Setting in Italian Operas by Mozart and His Contemporaries.” In Analyzing Mozart’s Operas, edited by Nathan Martin and Lauri Suurpää. Leuven: Peeters, in press. Rothstein, William. “Metrical Theory and Verdi’s Midcentury Operas.” Dutch Journal of Music Theory 16 (2011): 93–​111. Rothstein, William. “National Metrical Types in Music of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” In Communication in Eighteenth-​century Music, edited by Danuta Mirka and Kofi Agawu, 112–​59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Sanguinetti, Giorgio. The Art of Partimento. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Sanguinetti, Giorgio, and Deborah Burton. “Verdi’s Six-​Fours and the parola scenica.” Music Theory & Analysis 4 (2017): 61–​90. Schenker, Heinrich. Der freie Satz. Vienna: Universal, 1935. Translated by Ernst Oster as Free Composition (Der freie Satz). New York: Longman, 1979. Schenker, Heinrich. Harmonielehre. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1906. Abridged translation by Elisabeth Mann Borgese as Harmony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954 and 1980. Schenker, Heinrich. “Über den Niedergang der Kompositionskunst.” Music Analysis 24 (2005): 131–​232. Translated by William Drabkin as “On the Decline of the Art of Composition.” Music Analysis 24 (2005): 33–​129. Schenker Documents Online. https://​sche​nker​docu​ment​sonl​ine.org. Schmid, Manfred Hermann. Italienischer Vers und musikalische Syntax in Mozarts Opern. Mozart Studien 4. Tutzing: Schneider, 1994. Sechter, Simon. Die Grundsätze der musikalischen Komposition. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1853–​1854. Smith, Peter H. “Outer-​ Voice Conflicts: Their Analytical Challenges and Artistic Consequences.” Journal of Music Theory 44 (2000): 1–​43. Strohm, Reinhard. “Zur Metrik in Haydn und Anfossis ‘La vera costanza.’” In Joseph Haydn: Bericht über den internationalen Joseph Haydn Kongress (Wien, 1982), edited by Eva Badura-​Skoda, 279–​94. Munich: Henle, 1986. Temperley, David. “End-​Accented Phrases: An Analytical Exploration.” Journal of Music Theory 47 (2003): 125–​54.

Selected Bibliography  T  559 Verdi, Giuseppe. Le opere di Giuseppe Verdi. Edited by Philip Gossett and Francesco Izzo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, in collaboration with Casa Ricordi (Milan), 1983–​. Vogler, Joseph. Handbuch zur Harmonielehre. Prague, 1802. Walton, Benjamin. Rossini in Restoration Paris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Weber, Gottfried. Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst. Mainz, 1817–​1821 and later editions. Weitzmann, Carl Friedrich. Der übermässige Dreiklang. Berlin, 1853. Translated by Janna Saslaw as “The Augmented Triad.” Theory and Practice 29 (2004): 133–​228.

I N D E X O F NA M E S A N D WO R K S

Page numbers in boldface indicate one or more musical examples. Abbate, Carolyn, xii Adam, Adolphe, 501 Adamo, Maria Rosaria, 291 Albersheim, Gerhard, 79 Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg, 31, 55 Aldwell, Edward, 47n60, 139n, 189 Alighieri, Dante, 241 Alkan, Charles-​Valentin, 334 Allanbrook, Wye Jamison, 88 Arlin, Mary, 58–​59 Asioli, Bonifazio, xvii, 27, 29, 31–​32, 34–​44, 57–​63, 87, 90–​98, 104–​14, 117, 126, 134, 143, 178n69, 525 Il maestro di composizione, 31, 36, 38–​43, 59n80, 89n15, 90–​96, 178n69 Pigmalione (opera), 91, 93 Trattato di armonia, 31 Tre Ariette, 95 Auber, Daniel-​François-​Esprit Gustave III, 5 La muette de Portici, 338, 362 Babbitt, Milton, 64 Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, xiii, 74n38, 78–​79, 335 Bach, Johann Sebastian, xiii, xv, 66, 67, 78, 80, 191 Bailey, Robert, 339, 346n22, 362, 440–​41 Baini, Giuseppe, 38, 40 Baldini, Gabriele, 419 Balthazar, Scott, xxi, 89n15, 166n42, 172, 253n, 487 Balzac, Honoré de, 335 Baragwanath, Nicholas, 17n10, 20, 28–​29, 30n19, 31–​32, 36, 40, 57, 78n39, 81, 105–​9, 111, 292n7 Barbaja, Domenico, 230

Bartha, Dénes, 149–​50 Bartók, Béla, 65 Bartoli, Cecilia, 185, 323 Basevi, Abramo, 26n4, 45–​49, 54–​58, 62, 71, 73, 125, 169–​71, 183, 184n77, 261, 271n24, 304, 306, 334, 393, 448 Introduzione ad un nuovo sistema d’armonia, 47–​48, 54 Studi sull’ armonia, 46 Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi, 12–​14, 19, 23, 57, 164–​65, 169–​70, 177–​79, 405, 412, 487, 501–​2, 508, 513–​14, 535, 550, 553 Beethoven, Ludwig van, xiii, xv, 12, 23, 25, 67, 69, 115, 117, 173, 185, 292, 300, 334n2, 335, 359n31 Egmont Overture, 302n31 Fidelio, 4, 67, 404, 406, 543 Grosse Fuge, xv Piano Sonata op. 26, 374, 449n4 Piano Sonata op. 27, no. 2, 24n25 Piano Sonata op. 81a, 233 Piano Sonata op. 106, 339n19, 406 Symphony no. 3, 46, 55 Symphony no. 5, 55 Symphony no. 6, 59, 145 Symphony no. 9, 25–​26, 67–​68 Variations op. 34, 285–​86 Variations WoO 70, 235n12 Bellini, Vincenzo, xix, xxiii–​xxiv, 2, 7–​8, 17n11, 24, 26, 54, 69, 91, 109, 148, 171, 174, 194, 259, 289, 291–​333, 361, 367, 369, 371, 378, 459, 490, 506, 552–​53 Adelson e Salvini, 308n46 Beatrice di Tenda, 293–​95, 308n46, 310, 312–​13, 374 Bianca e Fernando, 24n25, 157–​59, 295, 300–​304, 310n47, 311, 313–​14, 319

562  T  Index of Names and Works Bellini, Vincenzo (cont.) I Capuleti e i Montecchi, 292, 295–​96, 297, 308–​10, 333, 459, 553 Norma, xvi, 23, 24n25, 69, 157–​59, 171, 179, 292, 293n12, 295, 296, 298–​300, 310–​11, 314–​18, 322–​33, 374, 383, 394n19, 459, 460, 513, 550–​51 Il pirata, xvi, 92–​93, 294–​95, 303, 305, 310n47, 398 I puritani, 47, 292, 371, 553 La sonnambula, 54, 105–​9, 292, 295, 304–​6 La straniera, 289, 292, 294n15, 295, 303–​4, 308, 314, 318–​22, 398, 553 Benjamin, William, 72n33 Benini, Maurizio, 185 Berg, Alban, 60n82 Berger, Karol, 145n13, 398n22 Berio, Francesco, 240–​41 Berkov, Viktor, 302n32 Berlin, Isaiah, xx Berlioz, Hector, 5, 62, 144, 259–​64, 269n21, 273, 281, 306, 359n30, 362–​64, 385, 501–​2, 553n4 L’Enfance du Christ, 264 Les Troyens, 250 Bianconi, Lorenzo, 88, 111–​17, 134, 144–​46, 487, 489, 491, 493 Boïeldieu, François-​Adrien, 21–​22 La dame blanche, 21 Boito, Arrigo, 2, 513 Bonaparte, Napoléon, 26, 159 Boulanger, Nadia, xiii Brahms, Johannes, xiii, xv, 73, 78, 212 Brauner, Charles, 293n12, 323 Brown, Clive, 405 Brzoska, Matthias, 362 Budden, Julian, xx, 12, 14n8, 24, 146, 148, 167, 171, 178, 279, 289n1, 292, 412, 434, 449n3, 459, 487, 514, 517–20 Burkhart, Charles, 98 Burmeister, Joachim, 20 Burton, Deborah, 449–​51 Byros, Vasili, 206, 412 Callas, Maria, xvi Cammarano, Salvadore, 22, 181, 449n3, 451n5, 457n10 Campion, François, 28 Caplin, William, 38n, 89n14, 126n52, 150, 155, 162, 166, 184, 198n, 219nn2–​3, 320n

Casella, Alfredo, 552 Catel, Charles-​Simon, 30–​31, 45–​46, 49, 62 Cherubini, Luigi, xix, 30, 259 Chopin, Frederic (Fryderyk), xiii, xvi, xx, 3, 12, 25–​26, 139, 149, 291, 449 Mazurka op. 33, no. 1, 73–​74 Mazurka op. 59, no. 2, 175n65 Nocturne op. 9, no. 2, 171 Prelude op. 28, no. 20, 117n50 Choron, Alexandre-​Étienne, 27, 30, 62 Christensen, Thomas, xvii, 62n84 Chusid, Martin, 11, 304–​5, 459–​60, 465, 469–​70, 472n26, 475–​80, 486, 535 Cimarosa, Domenico, 26, 172, 259 Clark, Suzannah, 200n22, 306 Cohn, Richard, 82–​83, 85n63, 197n, 286, 292n10, 346n23 Coli, Antonio, 32, 39n–​40n Collins, Michael, 238 Conati, Marcello, xxiii, 457, 459–​60, 465–​69, 472, 475, 484, 486, 551 Cone, Edward T., 87, 117n49, 213n, 223, 541 Cooper, Grosvenor, 87, 166 Cooper, James Fenimore, 378 Corelli, Arcangelo, 26 Cowell, Henry, xii Crutchfield, Will, xvi, 3n5, 185 Curtin, Phyllis, xvi Dahlhaus, Carl, 185 Dallapiccola, Luigi, 149–​50 Damschroder, David, 23n22, 30n16, 32n24, 494 Da Ponte, Lorenzo, 58, 91n19 Darcy, Warren, 187–​88, 243n26 David, Ferdinand, 334 Deathridge, John, 85n64, 323–​24 Delibes, Léo, 1 Lakmé, 1 Della Seta, Fabrizio, 291, 404n7, 419, 421–​23, 426, 428, 435–​36, 442, 457n10 Della Valle, Cesare, 231, 251 De Sanctis, Cesare, 30n19, 457n10 Descartes, René, 142–​44 Diergarten, Felix, 29n15 DiDonato, Joyce, 185 Domingo, Plácido, xvi Donizetti, Gaetano, xix, 6–​8, 24, 26, 148, 171, 174, 175, 183, 259, 269, 289–​90, 304, 334, 360–​61, 367, 369, 371–​72, 378, 383, 385–​401, 403n5, 552, 553

  Index of Names and Works  T  563 Adelia, 385, 398 L’ange di Nisida, 385–​86, 393n Anna Bolena, 151n, 371, 386, 398 L’assedio di Calais, 371 Belisario, 371 Caterina Cornaro, 385, 398 Don Pasquale, 385, 397 Dom Sébastien, 385–​86 L’elisir d’amore, 394 La favorite, 372, 385–​97, 553 La fille du régiment, 259, 385 Linda di Chamounix, 232, 385, 397 Lucia di Lammermoor, 171, 259, 371, 374, 386, 426 Lucrezia Borgia, 259, 371 Maria Padilla, 385, 398 Maria di Rohan, 6–​7, 162–​65, 372, 385–​86, 397–​401, 403n5, 553 Maria Stuarda, 371 Marino Faliero, 371 Les martyrs, 259, 385 Poliuto, 385 Rita, 385 Roberto Devereux, 159–​62, 398 Drabkin, William, 487–​92, 498, 541 Dumas, Alexandre père, 378 Durante, Francesco, 27 Dvoř️ák, Antonín, xiv Everett, Walter, 21 Ewell, Philip, xiv, 197n Fabbri, Paolo, 88–​89 Fauré, Gabriel, xiv Fellinger, Imogen, 238 Fenaroli, Fedele, 27, 375n Fétis, François-​Joseph, xvii, 34, 45–​56, 57–​59, 62, 71, 262, 264, 308, 334, 506 Filippi, Filippo, 25 Florimo, Francesco, 259n2, 372 Förster, Emanuel Aloys, 162n34, 336 Forte, Allen, xviii, 64 Franck, César, 62 Furtwängler, Wilhelm, xvi, 66, 79n42 Fux, Johann Joseph, 28, 31 Galeazzi, Francesco, 97 García, Manuel fils, 57–​58, 101, 134 Gauldin, Robert, 339, 448 George, Graham, 480

Georgiades, Thrasybulos, 88, 98, 115, 131, 146 Gerber, Heinich Nikolaus, 78 Gerhard, Anselm, 166n41, 261n10, 262, 403, 447, 489, 501n2 Gervasoni, Carlo, 28n11 Giger, Andreas, 58, 126, 370 Gisi, Peter, 405, 407–​10, 497n Gjerdingen, Robert, 26–​27, 30, 162n34, 375n Glarean, Heinrich, 16 Gluck, Christoph Williband, 69–​70, 259, 260n4, 333–​34, 439 Iphigénie en Aulide, 259 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, xv, 2, 68 Goggi, Emilia, 491 Gossett, Philip, xxiii, 2n2, 3, 7, 151, 171, 177, 179, 185, 219, 241n, 250–​51, 253, 260n3, 291n6, 294, 318, 372, 537 Grétry, André, 262, 412 Richard Cœur-​de-​lion, 460 Grey, Thomas S., 171, 323, 332 Groth, Renate, 30n17 Gutiérrez, Antonio García, 11, 489 Halévy, Jacques Fromental, 334 Halm, August, 65n2 Handel, George Frideric, xiii, 66–​67, 78, 334, 338 Organ Concertos, op. 4, 78 Hanslick, Eduard, xiv, 324 Harris-​Warrick, Rebecca, 386 Harrison, Daniel, 85, 474, 551 Hasse, Johann Adolph, 2 Hasty, Christopher, 87, 97, 98n22, 145 Hatten, Robert, 171, 451 Hauptmann, Moritz, 45, 57, 60, 63, 98, 138 Haydn, Joseph, xiii, xv, 23–​24, 29, 59n80, 67, 87, 115, 212, 292, 371, 403 The Creation (Die Schöpfung), 24, 202, 403, 411, 447, 551 String Quartet op. 33, no. 1, 33 String Quartet op. 74, no. 1, 42–​43, 44, 134 String Quartet op. 76, no. 6, 29 Symphony no. 94, 35–​36, 38, 60 Symphony no. 100, 41–​42 Symphony no. 104, 59 Heartz, Daniel, xiii Heinichen, Johann David, 27, 55, 78 Heneghan, Áine, 166n44 Henson, Karen, xvii

564  T  Index of Names and Works Hepokoski, James, 6–​7, 21n17, 22n20, 149–​ 50, 187–​88, 487 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 65, 67n19, 69 Hindemith, Paul, xiii, 71n31, 221, 308 Hitler, Adolf, xviii Holtmeier, Ludwig, xiii Horne, Marilyn, 185 Hudson, Elizabeth, 459, 535–​37 Huebner, Steven, 7, 149–​50, 162, 164–​67, 168, 172, 177, 183, 260n5, 360n34, 362n38, 447, 520, 525–​27 Hugo, Victor, 372, 411, 451 Imbimbo, Emanuele, 27 D’Indy, Vincent, xviii–​xix Jackendoff, Ray, 87, 98, 100–​101, 109n40, 127n57 Jankélévitch, Vladimir, xvi Jelensperger, Daniel, 30, 31 Jommelli, Niccolò, 259 Kalib, Sylvan, xiii Kamien, Roger, 98 Kaminsky, Peter, 306 Kanne, Friedrich August, 200 Kantner, Leopold, 386 Kerman, Joseph, xii, 149, 162, 171, 323, 332, 412n1, 475–​76, 487, 517, 525 Kimbell, David, xx, 314n, 323, 324–​26, 459 Kirkegaard-​Larsen, Thomas, 475n30 Kirnberger, Johann Philipp, 31–​32, 55 Koch, Heinrich Christoph, 164n, 170–​71, 183–​84, 190n7 Kopp, David, 80n48, 86, 196–​97, 216, 292 Krebs, Harald, 58, 88 Laitz, Steven, 212 LaRue, Jan, 87 Lavigna, Vincenzo, 126, 403, 442 Lawton, David, 136n60, 443, 454, 457–​62, 473n, 474, 476, 481–​83, 493n, 495n50, 551 Lerdahl, Fred, 87, 98, 100–​101, 109n40, 127n57, 258, 521n Lester, Joel, 55n71, 87 Levarie, Siegmund, xii, 475–​76, 545–​46 Levy, Ernst, 475 Lewin, David, 7, 64 Lippmann, Friedrich, 57, 88, 96, 149, 174, 291–​92, 294, 296n, 300, 319, 553n7

Liszt, Franz (Ferenc), xiv, 25–​26, 62, 348 London, Justin, 87, 97 Lorenz, Alfred, 162, 476 Louis, Rudolf, 84, 85 Lowinsky, Edward, 87 Lueger, Karl, xvii–​xviii Lully, Jean Baptiste, 259 Mahler, Gustav, xiv Malin, Yonatan, 88 Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm, 31 Martini, Giovanni Battista, 27 Marvin, Roberta Montemorra, 25n1, 28n13, 238 Marx, Adolf Bernhard, 36, 60, 62, 63, 145, 334 Masson, Charles, 33n32 Mattei, Stanislao, 28–​29, 126 Mattheson, Johann, 27n8, 143 Mayr, Simon, 26, 172, 173–​74, 175n64, 253n39, 338, 371 McCreless, Patrick, 243n26 Mendelssohn, Felix, xiii, xxiv, 78, 175n65, 334 Mercadante, Saverio, xix, 26, 148, 161, 165, 289–​90, 334, 371–​85, 386, 401, 442 Il bravo, 372, 376–​77, 378–​81, 449 I briganti, 371, 372n2 Il giuramento, 155–​56, 289, 371–​76, 378–​80, 383–​85, 393, 398, 400, 553 La vestale, 372, 376–​78, 381–​83 Metastasio, Pietro, 2, 58, 143, 177 Meyer, Leonard, 87, 166 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, xviii–​xxi, xxiv, 5, 7–​8, 12, 24, 26, 30, 45, 69, 167, 218, 259, 260n7, 269, 290, 334–​70, 372, 378, 405, 406, 423, 448, 457, 472, 551–​53 L’Africaine, 338 Il crociato in Egitto, xix, 338 Les Huguenots, 5, 70, 230, 272n, 287, 290, 334n3, 338–​39, 340, 350, 353–​70, 371, 448, 513, 552 Margherita d’Anjou, 338 Le prophète, 5, 69–​70, 338–​39, 346–​48, 350, 357–​58, 360n34, 361, 364n43, 434, 448 Robert le diable, 167, 290, 334, 338–​39, 342–​49, 351–​52, 358–​61, 364n43, 405, 423, 448, 552 Semiramide riconosciuta, 218n Mirka, Danuta, 44n54, 87 Moltke, Helmuth von, 6

  Index of Names and Works  T  565 Momigny, Jérôme-​Joseph de, 32–​38, 42–​43, 46n58, 60, 63 Cours complet d’harmonie et de composition, 35, 43 La seule vraie théorie de la musique, 35–​38 Monterosso, Raffaele, 293n12, 300n25, 315n49, 323, 324n62 Monteverdi, Claudio, 47 Vespro della Beata Vergine, 550n Moreen, Robert, 88, 89n15, 90, 271n24, 392n, 547 Moscheles, Ignaz, 334 Mozart, Wolfgang, xii–​xiii, xv, 23–​24, 33, 47, 67–​70, 87, 88, 101, 111, 115, 117, 126, 172, 218, 259, 292, 304, 334, 367, 371, 403, 465n14 La clemenza di Tito, 172 Così fan tutte, 172 Don Giovanni, xiii, 24, 42, 44, 57–​58, 65, 68, 98–​100, 105, 126, 138, 172, 242n23, 360, 403, 459, 474, 537 Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 23n23, 68, 172 Idomeneo, 218 Le nozze di Figaro, 34–​35, 64, 91, 94, 105, 172 String Quartet in D Minor, K. 421, 43 String Quartet in C Major, K. 465, 33, 212n30 Symphony in G Minor, K. 550, 109n40 Die Zauberflöte, 69, 172, 196n16 Muzio, Emanuele, 25n1, 26, 28, 32, 442

Paisiello, Giovanni, 26, 87, 94, 101, 109, 178n69, 289n2 L’amor contrastato, 235 Il barbiere di Siviglia, 101, 103–​5, 114 Nina, 109–​11 Pirro, xix Parker, Roger, xii, 403n2, 404n6, 412, 441, 447, 487, 502n4 Perahia, Murray, xvi Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 64, 143 Stabat mater, 143, 317n51 Perle, George, 286, 346, 357 Petrobelli, Pierluigi, xx, 292n7, 304–​5, 465, 487, 502, 549 Piave, Francesco Maria, 152–​53, 410n19, 411, 427, 441, 451n6, 513 Piccinni, Niccolò, 259 Pittman, Josiah, 316 Ponchielli, Amilcare, 26n5 La Gioconda, 155, 372 Poniatowski, Josef, 491 Porpora, Nicola, 29 Pospíšil, Milan, 338–​39, 357, 448–​49 Powers, Harold, xi–​xii, xiv, xx, xxiii, 136, 181, 183–​84, 305, 411, 434–​35, 459, 465, 469n19, 470–​71, 483–​84, 486, 514, 528–​30, 537–​39, 541, 543n41, 545–​47, 552–​53 Printz, Wolfgang Caspar, 143 Proctor, Gregory, 292n10 Puccini, Giacomo, xxi, 7, 28, 81, 136n60 Pulignano, Ernesto, 372–​73, 383n

Nicolai, Otto, 66n13, 338 Niedt, Friedrich Erhard, 27, 78 Nobile, Drew, 22–23 Noske, Frits, 230n7, 439–​40, 502, 505–​6, 514

Rameau, Jean-​Philippe, 13, 27–​28, 30–​31, 55, 62–​63, 80, 85, 143, 260n4, 406, 439 Code de musique pratique, 13, 55n70, 192 Génération harmonique, 406n14 Traité de l’harmonie, 46, 143n5 Ratner, Leonard, 143n7, 188n, 190n8, 230n8, 475 Reger, Max, 80 Rehding, Alexander, xvii, 81n53 Reicha, Anton (Antonín), 30–​32, 58, 62, 183–​84 Art du compositeur dramatique, 62 Cours de composition musicale, 30–​32, 56 Traité de mélodie, 33–​35, 36, 38, 62, 143–​44, 159, 170 Traité de haute composition musicale, 16n–​17n, 31, 170

Oettingen, Arthur von, 81n53 Offenbach, Jacques, 527 Oppel, Reinhard, 79 Oster, Ernst, xv Osthoff, Wolfgang, 459, 465, 470, 514 Pacini, Giovanni, 289 Saffo, 289 Paër, Ferdinando, 26, 259 Paganini, Niccolò, 24n24 Pagannone, Giorgio, 143n9, 149–​50, 166–​67, 175n64, 439

566  T  Index of Names and Works Ricordi, Giulio, 6, 404n6, 404n8 Riemann, Hugo, xvii, xxi, 63, 64, 80–​86, 183, 189, 191–​92, 206n28, 326, 475, 481 Riepel, Joseph, 150, 165 Rink, John, 171 Rinn, Hermann, 65 Ritorni, Carlo, 90 Romani, Felice, 105, 325–​26 Rosen, Charles, xiii, 86 Rosen, David, 4n7, 393n, 491, 553n6 Rosenberg, Jesse, 491 Rossi, Gaetano, xix, 155, 198, 218, 338, 371 Rossini, Gioachino, xi, xix, xxi, 1–​3, 5–​8, 24, 26, 28, 47, 64, 69, 86, 101, 109, 111–​26, 141, 142, 144–​48, 172–​81, 185, 187–​290, 291, 292, 294, 295, 304, 310, 319, 334, 338, 346, 361, 367, 369, 370, 550 Armida, 3, 230n9 Aureliano in Palmira, 205 Il barbiere di Siviglia, 145, 187, 190–​91, 193, 194–​95, 204–​16 La Cenerentola, 146 Le comte Ory, 260 La donna del lago, 2, 117, 119–​26, 141, 175–​77, 190, 218, 230–​38, 245, 260, 398, 551 Eduardo e Cristina, 187 Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, 3, 205 Ermione, 200, 259 La gazza ladra, 187, 191n, 199, 201, 218, 238 Guillaume Tell, 5, 49, 205n26, 232, 258, 259–​88 L’italiana in Algeri, 88, 111–​16, 145 Maometto II, xix, 6, 218, 231, 250–​58, 259, 260, 338, 550 Mathilde di Shabran, 187 “Mi lagnerò tacendo,” 2 Moïse et Pharaon, 248n, 250, 260, 286, 460 Mosè in Egitto, 146, 193n, 195, 200–​204, 218, 245–​50, 258, 260, 284, 286, 318 Otello, 1–​3, 6, 174n, 179–​81, 191n, 194, 195, 201, 205n26, 218, 230, 238–​45, 258, 304, 333, 373, 383 Semiramide, xix, xxiv, 57–​58, 91, 94–​96, 101–​2, 117–​19, 134, 145, 147–​48, 174, 181, 185, 187, 190, 192, 193n, 200, 201, 218–​30, 231, 259, 338, 439, 552 Le siège de Corinthe, 6, 251, 254–​55, 260, 287–​88, 330 Soirées musicales (songs), 52–​53, 101n34

Tancredi, 146, 187, 195–​99, 201, 203, 238, 259, 264, 506 Il viaggio a Reims, 259–​60 Zelmira, 200, 201, 217, 259, 287, 330, 338, 398, 552 Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques, 13, 63n85, 261–​62 Rubini, Giovanni Battista, 294–​95 Saariaho, Kaija, 259 Sacchini, Antonio, 259 Salieri, Antonio, 231n10, 259 Salzer, Felix, xvi, 65n3 Samarotto, Frank, 98 Sanguinetti, Giorgio, 24n25, 26–​27, 30n18, 108n38, 292n7, 406n13, 442n19, 449–​51 Saslaw, Janna, 33 Scarlatti, Alessandro, 26 Scarlatti, Domenico, xiii, 26, 66 Schachter, Carl, xvi, xviii, 47n60, 73, 74, 87, 98, 100, 139n, 175n65, 189, 221n5, 242n24, 245, 325n66, 406n13 Schaeffer, Julius, 85 Schenker, Heinrich, xii–​xv, xvii–​xviii, xx–​xxi, 23n22, 26, 44, 45, 52–​54, 55, 64–​80, 81, 83n, 98, 126n52, 131, 139n, 219, 239, 243n45, 258, 292, 300, 317n51, 332n74, 475 Beethovens neunte Sinfonie, 68 Der freie Satz, xviii, 66–​68, 79, 189 Harmonielehre, 23n22, 68, 70–​72, 80, 86n70, 300 Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, 66, 73, 79, 80, 332n74 Über den Niedergang der Kompositionskunst, 68–​70 Der Tonwille, 72, 79, 332n74 Schiller, Friedrich, 67, 68, 433 Schlesinger, Maurice, 334 Schmalfeldt, Janet, 111–​12, 175 Schmid, Manfred Hermann, 88, 89, 115, 146 Schoenberg, Arnold, xiii, 45, 89n14, 166, 216, 239, 258, 291, 300, 335, 475, 489 Erwartung, 60n82 Harmonielehre, 188n, 291n1 Moses und Aron, 67 Piano Concerto, xv Structural Functions of Harmony, 188n, 244, 291n2, 541n36 Style and Idea, 239 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 67, 323

  Index of Names and Works  T  567 Schubert, Franz, xiii, xx, xxiv, 25, 88, 139, 200, 212n31, 216n33, 245, 300, 335, 449 Ave Maria, 25 Ganymed, 300 Moments musicaux, 213n32 Piano Sonata, D. 845 (op. 42), 325n66 String Quartet, D. 887 (op. 161), 287n36, 306 String Quintet, 74–​78, 306 “Wanderer” Fantasy, 200 Schumann, Robert, xiii, xx, 12, 25, 306, 334 Bach arrangements, 79 Davidsbündlertänze, 306 Scott, Walter, 119, 231, 238 Scribe, Eugène, 338, 361n35, 501 Sechter, Simon, 45, 46n59, 55, 57, 60–​61, 63, 70, 80, 84 Selva, Antonio, 416 Sennefelder, Doris, 245n30, 249n, 251 Seuriot, Louis-​Auguste, 31 Shakespeare, William, 1, 231, 241, 373, 451 Smart, Mary Ann, xii Smetana, Bedř️ich, 64–​65 The Bartered Bride, 64 Smith, Peter H., 74–​78 Snarrenberg, Robert, 88 Solera, Temistocle, 433, 441 Spitta, Philipp, 78 Spohr, Ludwig, 405, 551–​52 Faust, 359n31, 405 Macbeth, 405 Pietro di Abano, 359n31 Spontini, Gaspare, xix, 26, 30, 231n11, 259, 260n7, 304, 338 Fernand Cortez, xix, 251, 259 La vestale, 259, 333 Stout, Alan, 60n82 Strauss, Johann, Sr., 55 Strauss, Richard, xiv–​xv Stravinsky, Igor, 73, 80 Concerto for Piano and Winds, 73, 239 Strohm, Reinhard, 88, 99, 101, 104, 476, 483 Sullivan, Arthur, 315–​16 Summach, Jay, 21n18 Swinden, Kevin, 86 Tanenbaum, Faun Stacy, 514 Tartini, Giuseppe, 27n9 Taruskin, Richard, xii, 350, 367 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, xiv

Telesco, Paula, 344 Temperley, David, 87, 100–​101, 117n51 Thuille, Ludwig, 84–​85 Tottola, Andrea Leona, 231 Tovey, Donald Francis, xiii, 100n30, 115, 189 Traetta, Tommaso, 259 Tusa, Michael, 405 Ullmann, Hermann, 65n5 Vallotti, Francesco Antonio, 27n9, 32, 335 Van, Gilles de, 457 Van den Toorn, Pieter, 258 Varesi, Felice, 465 Verdi, Giuseppe, xi–​xii, xiv, xvi, xix–​xxi, 1–​8, 11–​24, 25–​26, 28–​29, 32, 45, 57, 66, 69, 87, 88, 101, 111, 126–​41, 162, 167, 171, 174, 181, 208, 230, 259, 288–​90, 304–​5, 319, 338–​44, 357, 361, 367, 370, 372, 378, 383, 386, 393–​94, 398, 403–​547, 549–​53 Aida, xiv, 26, 361, 386, 406, 439 Attila, 403, 410, 411, 441–​47, 448, 489, 512–​13, 551 Un ballo in maschera, xii, xxi, 4–​6, 230, 406, 408n, 410, 411, 416–​17, 475, 476n32, 501, 527–​30, 535, 537–​47, 552–​53 La battaglia di Legnano, 129–​33 Don Carlos, xvi, 126, 232, 361, 406 I due Foscari, 170, 412, 460 Ernani, 151–​55, 183, 410, 411–​33, 441, 442, 451, 465, 511, 551, 553 Falstaff, xiv, 64–​65, 66n13, 69, 513 La forza del destino, 4, 25, 319 Giovanna d’Arco, 410, 411, 433–​41, 442, 447, 448, 449, 547, 551 Jérusalem, 126n54 I Lombardi alla prima crociata, 126n54, 169–​70, 433, 441 Luisa Miller, 181–​83, 232, 398, 405, 553 Macbeth, 4, 6, 131, 404, 405, 407, 448, 449–​51, 459, 465, 491, 528, 551, 553 Messa da Requiem, xiv Nabucco, 406, 433, 441, 497 Otello, xiv, 1–​3, 4, 6–​7, 174n, 305, 451, 491, 513 Rigoletto, xxiii, 127–​29, 131, 133–​35, 171, 177–​78, 208, 212, 305, 339, 410, 411, 441, 448, 451–​86, 491–​92, 498, 502, 528, 531, 550–​53

568  T  Index of Names and Works Verdi, Giuseppe (cont.) Simon Boccanegra, 4, 6, 149, 162, 166, 410, 411, 441, 501, 513–​28, 531–​36, 541, 552–​53 Stiffelio, 437n La traviata, xv, 4, 5, 131, 134, 183–​84, 441, 553 Il trovatore, xxi, 4, 6, 11–​24, 25–​26, 96, 127, 134, 136–​41, 167–​68, 305, 383, 393, 398, 406, 407, 410, 411, 451–​59, 486–​500, 502, 541, 545, 551, 553 Les vêpres siciliennes, 5, 126, 339, 341, 344, 361n35, 410, 448, 497, 501–​13, 514, 550 Verne, Jules, 362 Verrett, Shirley, xvi Vinci, Leonardo, 2, 143 Violin, Moriz, 78 Viotti, Giovanni Battista, 262 Vogler, Georg Joseph, xix, 31–​32, 62n83, 143, 335–​39, 346, 348, 376, 423 Die Scala, 336–​38, 348, 376 Voltaire (François-​Marie Arouet), 259 Wagner, Richard, xi–​xiv, xvii, xx–​xxi, 12, 25–​26, 55, 65, 67–​72, 80, 185n1, 291, 297, 334, 339, 368, 394n20, 440, 460, 513, 535, 552 Der fliegende Holländer, 359n31, 405 Götterdämmerung, 204, 398 Das Judentum in der Musik, xvii, 334 Lohengrin, 26, 85

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 148, 162 Oper und Drama, 26, 69, 90 other prose works, 67, 143n9, 334n3 Ring cycle, 84–​85, 264 Tannhäuser, 4, 440–​41 Tristan und Isolde, 26, 49n64, 54, 71–​72, 398, 476n32, 535 Walton, Benjamin, 260n7, 261n11, 262, 273 Weber, Carl Maria von, xix, 69, 551 Euryanthe, 359n31, 405, 460 Der Freischütz, 24, 69, 230n9, 335, 346, 358, 359n31, 405, 460, 466–​67, 528, 535, 553 Weber, Gottfried, xix, 29–​33, 36, 43–​4 4, 56, 60–​63, 80, 212n30, 335, 406n13, 423–​ 24, 475 Webster, James, 88–​89 Weitzmann, Carl, 45, 56–​57, 545 Westergaard, Peter, 87 Westphal, Rudolph, 63 Winter, Peter, 335 Wittmann, Michael, 291, 372n2 Wolf, Hugo, xiv Yavorsky, Boleslav, 302n32 Yeston, Maury, 87 Zarlino, Gioseffo, 406 Zavlunov, Daniil, 17n11, 167 Zingarelli, Niccolò, 27, 371 Zuckerkandl, Victor, 144–​45

GENERAL INDEX

absolute music, 67–​71 absolute pitch, 258, 487 Académie Royale de Musique, see Opéra (Paris) accent, metrical, 60, 100–​101, 104, 108, 113, 126–​41, 465 accent, non-​metrical, 117, 134, 138, 495 accent, poetic, 42, 58, 89–​96, 392, 465 accento comune, 42–​44, 58, 90, 94, 99–​101, 104, 106–​9, 112–​14, 117, 127–​29, 138–​41, 155, 159–​61, 392 accentual equilibrium, 101–​9, 114, 129 ambitus, 14–​18, 20, 266 antisemitism, xvii–​xix arioso, 241, 246, 296, 316, 387–​88, 394, 459, 493 associative harmony, associative tonality, 226–​30, 332, 459, 467–​75, 537–​41, 546, 551–​53 attinenti, 46, 48–​49, 56, 304 Auskomponierung, 73, 239, 243–​44, 258, 495, 517, 553 Austria, xv, xviii, 24–​25, 28, 45, 55, 62–​65, 260, 264, 269, 273–​75, 277, 281, 295n19, 325n66, 371n1, 552 (see also Vienna) autograph, 3, 8, 11–​12, 238, 239, 241, 245n30, 246n31, 260, 264, 293–​95, 299–​300, 323, 330n71, 362n38, 372–​74, 433, 502 ballade, 21–​22, 361 banda (stage band), 232, 236, 425, 434, 436, 441, 551 bar form, 162, 166, 271–​72, 363–​65 barcarolle, 497, 517, 508–​9 basso continuo, see thoroughbass Belgium, 25 bolero, 513 Bologna, 27

cabaletta, 6, 96, 101–​2, 134, 136–​41, 145–​48, 157–​62, 173, 175–​79, 183–​84, 190, 196–​ 99, 201, 231, 237n13, 241–​42, 245, 248–​ 52, 255, 265, 273, 275, 282, 284–​85, 296, 303, 308–​11, 314, 316, 320–​22, 325–​26, 329, 332, 341, 364–​69, 374, 383–​88, 394–​400, 413, 419, 426, 434–​ 37, 441, 443, 447, 453–​56, 466, 469, 473, 475, 483, 488, 490–​92, 506, 509, 520, 538, 546, 551 (see also stretta) cadences, 28, 31, 33, 39, 153, 171, 219, 221, 406 cadenza composta, 108 cadenza lunga, 108–​9, 126, 141, 198, 208, 229, 320 felicità felicità felicità, see “one more time” melodic, 13, 33–​37 metric placement of, 34, 57–​61 Phrygian, 18, 140, 235, 388n14, 524 (see also modes) plagal, 221, 240, 242, 277, 281, 505 unaccompanied, 254n, 296–​300, 308, 324, 427–​28, 490, 509 canto fermo (cantus firmus), 28, 31, 55, 62, 80 canzone, 11–​14, 18–​21, 23, 131, 133–​34, 205, 454–​55, 460, 465, 487, 500, 551, 553 canzonetta, 232–​38 Caramoor, xvi, xxiv cavatina (entrance aria), 157, 162–​64, 170n49, 173, 190, 205–​7, 217, 231–​32, 237, 295n21, 303, 305, 308–​10, 373–​74, 414–​15, 447, 506, 520 Chicago Lyric Opera, xv chorale, xv, 14, 31–​32, 62, 362, 365n, 388, 394, 549 chromatic mediants, see mediant relations chromatic wedge progression, 339, 357, 376, 448

570  T  General Index church keys, 30 coda, 115, 151, 153, 155, 157, 162, 165, 167–​71, 174–​75, 178–​79, 198, 219, 232, 246, 286, 323, 326, 363–​65, 367, 370, 388, 392–​93, 428, 474, 491, 506, 525, 546 (see also double coda) common-​tone modulation, see common-​ tone tonality common-​tone tonality, 47, 197, 203, 233–​36, 241–​43, 264, 266, 274, 287, 292, 298–​99, 488, 550 composing-​out, see Auskomponierung concertato, 179–​81, 209, 220, 223, 225, 229–​ 30, 250, 273, 284, 296, 326, 382–​83, 436, 457, 508–​9, 547 critical edition, xxiv, 5–​8, 162, 238, 264, 281, 292, 295, 318, 321, 323, 346, 372, 386, 388, 433, 502, 513 diegetic songs, 131n, 194–​95, 240n, 390n16, 440–​41, 460, 493 double coda, 167–​71, 178, 180, 215–​16, 326, 332, 376 (see also coda) double cycle, 443, 446, 481–​84 dualism, 80–​82 enharmonicism, 47–​49, 56, 82–​84, 197, 200, 202–​5, 212, 280, 330, 376, 407, 423, 449n4, 467, 480, 490, 497–​98, 535, 541, 546 entrainment, metrical, 97, 104, 134 equal division of the octave, see interval cycles expansion of a phrase, 111, 159–​62, 165, 168, 439, 521 expressive tonality, 339, 362, 440–​41 Fenice, La (Venice), 338, 411, 441 figured bass, see thoroughbass Florence, 6, 24, 324n61, 448 four-​cycle, 96–​111, 114–​18, 128–​41 France, see Paris fugue, 27, 31 function, harmonic, 22, 79, 81–​86, 153, 189–​92, 216, 219–​20, 225, 283, 292, 301, 358, 362, 369, 421, 423, 428, 442, 449, 451, 474–​76, 487–​88, 490, 502, 515, 528–​31, 535 fundamental bass, 27–​28, 30–​32, 45, 79–​80, 239, 255n42, 300–​302, 332n74

fusion, formal, 162–​66, 245–​58, 521, 522–​24, 527 Generalbass, see thoroughbass German critics, xiv, 24, 334 language, xv, xix, 26, 46n59, 65, 89, 172, 188n, 334 music, xii–​xvi, xx–​xxi, 23–​26, 36, 42, 55, 65–​69, 88, 117, 127, 150, 167, 296, 306, 334–​35, 338, 405, 412, 549, 551–​53 musicology, xiii, 57, 291 nation, xviii–​xix, 24, 62, 65–​66, 69, 78 theory, xiii, 12, 27–​34, 36, 62–​63, 64–​86, 88, 143, 335, 549 Gerüstbau, 115, 146 gignetic, 473, 475–​86, 545–​46 grand opéra, xix, 290, 338–​39, 358, 361, 370, 372, 385–​86, 434, 448, 501 groundswell, 171, 332 Harmonieschritte (Riemann), 81–​83 harmony, expressed through melody, 12–​14, 18–​19, 52–​55, 70–​74, 78, 298, 495n51, 502–​6 hexatonic, 197, 203–​4, 220, 223, 230, 252, 286–​87, 541 holding pattern, 151, 171 hypermeter, 34, 40–​44, 63, 117, 159 interval cycles, 279, 286, 346, 541 C1 (semitones), 346 C2 (whole tones), 288, 338, 346, 348, 378 C3 (minor thirds), 56–​57, 346, 348, 358–​59, 364, 369–​70, 423, 460n13, 466–​67, 502–​5, 527–​43, 545, 547, 552–​53 C4 (major thirds), 56–​57, 200, 207, 217, 230, 274, 277, 286–​88, 346, 357, 363, 367, 394, 397, 400, 541–​45 C6 (tritones), 346–​48 introduzione, xix, 14n8, 162, 179, 190, 205–​6, 217, 218–​19, 231–​36, 373, 378–​81, 442–​ 43, 462, 475, 481, 484, 491, 500, 502 isorhythm, 94–​96, 117, 136, 141 just intonation, 82, 84 Kopfton, 329, 332, 416, 427 Kunstwart, Der (journal), 65–​66

  General Index  T  571 leitmotif, 84–​85, 240, 264, 358, 460, 528, 553 line endings, poetic piano, 89, 106, 109, 113, 153, 392, 427 srducciolo, 89, 91, 112–​13 tronco, 89, 92, 106, 109, 112–​14, 136, 140, 152–​ 53, 155, 159, 162, 175, 390–​92, 427–​28, 521 lyric form, 149–​72, 174–​78, 179n70, 183, 197, 350–​57, 363–​64, 367, 383–​84, 387–​88, 393, 419, 427–​33, 437–​39, 441, 447, 506, 520–​27 mediant relations chromatic, 86, 185, 196–​200, 203–​5, 207, 213, 216–​17, 232, 237, 246, 248, 254, 279, 543, 550 diatonic, 187–​96, 216, 221, 242, 254, 446 disjunct, 196–​97, 216, 220 meter, musical, 34–​45, 55, 57–​61, 63, 87–​ 141, 164, 177–​79, 281n31, 301, 336, 365, 390, 393, 459, 462, 525–​27 compound meter, 119–​25, 390 meter, poetic, 57, 88–​96, 134, 183, 249n (see also versification) decasillabo, 89–​92, 94, 96, 248, 392, 521 endecasillabo, 89, 92 octosyllable, 388, 392 ottonario, 89–​90, 92, 96, 125, 127, 129, 152–​56, 184, 240–​41, 252, 390 novenario, 89, 392 quaternario, 252 quinario, quinario doppio, 89–​90, 92, 94–​95, 104–​6, 112, 117, 131, 175, 184, 197, 252, 390–​92 senario, senario doppio, 89–​91, 131, 159–​61, 240–​41, 248 settenario, settenario doppio (versi martelliani), 89–​90, 92, 94, 96, 105–​6, 136, 162, 175, 184, 240–​41, 248, 252, 427, 521, 523–​25 verso sciolto, versi sciolti, 89, 173, 183–​84, 247, 296, 319, 325, 385, 493, 517 metrical preference rules, 100–​101, 127n57 Metropolitan Opera (New York), xvi, xxiv, 398 Milan, 2, 6, 9, 24n25, 25, 27, 29, 126, 187–​ 88, 289, 292–​93, 295n19, 325n66, 371, 385, 403 modes (other than major and minor), 16, 18–​19, 30–​32, 62n83, 264, 406, 553 Aeolian, 20

Dorian, 31 Hypoæolian, 16, 20 Lydian, 262 Phrygian, 18–​23, 31, 140, 235, 375–​76, 388, 394, 406, 465, 470, 524 Moscow, see Russia moti del basso, see sequence mutability, 17, 20, 302–​4, 374 Naples, xiv, xix, 1–​3, 6, 9, 26–​27, 29, 30, 45, 173, 187–​88, 200, 230, 231n10, 233, 245, 251, 259, 287, 289, 293, 370–​72, 375, 385, 401, 403, 442n19 Nazism, xiii, xviii, 65, 98n24 neo-​Riemannian operations, 82–​84, 86, 235, 252, 326, 423, 488 HEXPOLE, see hexatonic L (Leittonwechsel), 82–​83, 86, 191–​92, 235, 326, 481, 488 N (nebenverwandt), 82–​83 P (parallel), 82–​83, 86, 235, 252, 326, 423, 488 R (relative), 82–​83, 86, 252, 326, 423, 488 SLIDE (common-​third transformation), 82–​83, 202, 362, 488, 498 neo-​Riemannian theory, 64, 82, 84, 86, 258, 476n30, 488 omnibus progression, 317, 330–​32, 335–​36, 339, 344, 370, 448, 504–​5, 531, 535 omnitonic, see Fétis (Index of Names and Works) “one more time,” 111–​14, 175, 179 ontic, 473, 475–​86, 546 Opéra (Paris), 5, 259–​60, 261n12, 290, 338, 360n32, 371, 385, 501 opéra-​comique (genre), 21, 259, 262, 361, 385, 390 Opéra-​Comique (theater, Paris), 385 opera semiseria, 187–​88, 385, 397–​98 Padua, 27n9, 32, 335n6 Paris, xiv, xvii, xix, xxi, 1, 2n1, 4–​6, 9, 23, 25, 27–​28, 30, 32, 33, 35, 45, 57, 62, 218, 250, 258, 259, 289–​90, 293, 322, 334, 338, 370, 371, 385, 388, 398, 448, 501–​2, 511, 553 parlante, 114, 125, 178, 179, 181, 183, 209, 241, 247, 271, 367, 451, 459 Parma, xxiii, 293

572  T  General Index partimento, 27–​28, 30–​32, 45, 78–​79, 126n52, 375, 442, 449 pasticcio, 3, 187 pentatonic, 262n13, 514, 517–20 period grammatical (Bianconi), 115, 144 formal, 33, 60–​61, 89, 104, 106, 108–​9, 111–​13, 169–​70, 183–​84, 190, 194, 196, 216, 235, 244, 248–​49, 269, 274, 326, 394, 427, 513, 525 (see also period, parallel) metrical (Tovey), 115 parallel, 111–​13, 144, 153–​56, 162, 164–​65, 166, 169, 175–​77, 180, 190, 191, 197, 206, 306–​7, 393, 521, 523 (see also period, formal) physical (Bianconi), 115–​17, 134, 145–​46 Pesaro, 185 plainchant, 14, 30–​31, 62, 386–​88 polymeter, 98, 100, 104–​5, 131 prechorus, see verse–​prechorus–​chorus (form) preghiera, prière, 146, 195, 203, 240–​41, 248n, 251–​58, 284–​85, 360–​61, 408, 539 projection, metric, 97, 145 racism, xvii racconto, 455, 491, 500, 514–​17, 520, 521, 524–​27, 531 ranz de vaches, 261–​63, 266, 274 reciting tone, 17, 262, 394, 425, 517–​19, 550 (see also sonorità) refrain, 21–​22, 275, 279, 360, 363, 365–​67 règle d’octave, see Rule of the Octave regola dell’ottava, see Rule of the Octave reminiscence motive, 460 rhyme, 89–​90, 134, 152–​55, 159, 162, 173, 175, 241, 248, 249n, 314n, 493 ritmo armonico, 38–​43, 90–​96, 98, 106–​8, 111–​17, 127–​29, 134, 141 Roman-​numeral analysis, 32, 80, 84, 167, 187, 244, 255n42, 264, 335, 476, 495 romanza, romance, 23n23, 167, 173, 240–​44, 274–​75, 303–​4, 308, 362, 383, 386–​94, 460, 493, 497, 517, 553 Rome, 1–​2, 9, 187–​88, 385 rondò, 172–​73, 219, 232, 237–​38 Rule of the Octave, 28, 30, 79, 335 Russia, xiii, xv, xvii, 4, 17, 73, 127, 202, 302

St. Petersburg, see Russia San Carlo, Teatro (Naples), 372 Scala, Teatro alla (Milan), 289, 295, 338, 372n2, 403, 433, 491 scapigliati, 5 scena, scène, 129, 155, 173, 179, 195, 218, 240–​41, 244, 246, 250–​53, 269–​70, 281, 284, 295–​96, 298, 308, 310–​22, 324–​26, 329–​33, 361, 373–​74, 376–​78, 380–​87, 393, 413, 423, 426–​27, 437, 447, 451, 454, 459, 465, 467, 470–​74, 486, 492–​ 500, 514–​19, 532, 537–​39 schema theory, 30, 108n, 117n51 cadenza lunga, see cadences chromatic fourth, 506 Fonte, 150–​51, 165, 207 Le–​Sol–​Fi–​Sol, 206–​8, 220, 271, 344, 388, 394, 412, 416, 418, 420–​21, 535 Monte, 150, 167, 181, 525–​27 passamezzo antico, 393 Ponte, 150–​51, 153, 170, 177, 197–​98, 527 quiescenza, 30, 490 romanesca, 28, 195, 393 Schritt/​Wechsel system, see Harmonieschritte (Riemann) sentence (musical form), 111, 144, 165–​67, 184, 271n25, 364, 369, 439, 521, 525 sequence, 28–​29, 150–​51, 165, 167, 171, 196, 203, 225, 241–​44, 280, 285–​88, 301–​2, 313–​14, 319, 336–​37, 346–​50, 357, 374–​77, 383, 385, 497–​98, 504–​5, 516, 521–​22, 525, 527, 537, 540 six-​four chords, 100, 139, 171, 181, 212, 301–​2, 304, 336, 339, 346n24, 350, 357, 378–​82, 442, 449–​51, 495, 502, 519n21, 531 arrival, 171, 451 wonder, 449–​51 “solar” tonality, 190, 475 solfeggio, xiv, 26–​27, 28n11, 78n39 solita forma, 177, 183, 219, 231, 254, 269, 325, 360, 374, 393, 398, 400, 426, 447, 457, 514, 550, 553 (see also cabaletta, tempo d’attacco, tempo di mezzo) sonorità, 304–​8, 322–​33, 393–​94, 416–​19, 423–​29, 465–​69, 483–​84, 487, 502, 511–​12, 517–​19, 527, 549–​53 (see also reciting tone) sortita, see cavatina (entrance aria) stretta, 134, 179, 180–​82, 200, 206, 209, 215, 216, 223, 225, 230, 231, 248–​49, 251, 284, 296, 314, 319, 326, 332, 346n24,

  General Index  T  573 350, 376, 400, 414–​15, 416n5, 427, 439, 462, 475, 481, 493, 497–​98, 517, 537, 539 (see also cabaletta) strophic form, 11, 14n7, 21–​22, 23n23, 162, 165, 173, 194–​95, 220, 242, 249, 326, 361, 363 super-​number, 411, 434–​35, 546–​47 supplenti, 46–​48, 73, 304–​7 systems, diatonic, 14, 18, 20, 255, 321–​22, 326, 329, 383, 405–​10, 415, 423, 426, 437, 487–​90, 492, 545 tarantella, 509, 513 Teatro alla Scala, see Scala tempo d’attacco, 177–​80, 183–​84, 195–​96, 199, 219–​20, 241–​42, 246–​49, 251, 269–​ 72, 277, 284, 298–​99, 310, 312–​17, 319, 325–​26, 367, 370, 374, 383–​84, 393–​94, 400, 413, 416, 419, 427, 435, 442, 447, 459, 469–​71, 474, 493, 497–​98, 508, 523, 534, 539, 543 tempo di mezzo, 173, 177–​78, 181–​83, 196, 200–​201, 202, 209, 225, 231, 245–​50, 252–​53, 255, 271–​72, 274, 281, 284, 296, 308–​11, 313–​14, 319–​22, 325–​26, 329, 332–​33, 374–​75, 376, 394, 400–​ 401, 407, 413, 416, 427, 435, 439, 446, 473, 475, 476, 483n36, 490–​92, 537–​ 40, 543, 545 Théâtre-​Italien (Paris), 2, 259–​60, 371, 385 Théâtre de la Renaissance (Paris), 259, 385 thoroughbass, 26–​27, 32, 70, 78–​80, 86, 336, 449

tinta, 261, 394, 410, 412, 484, 501, 513–​14, 528, 547 tonal field, 406, 489–​92, 500 tonal pairing, 249, 273, 281, 292, 306, 308, 318–​22, 388, 393, 422–​23, 488 (see also trio of keys) tonal return, 151, 197, 200, 207–​8, 218, 220, 225, 239, 242–​48, 255–​58, 320, 322, 329, 365, 385, 400, 447, 473, 497, 506, 523, 545, 550–​51 topics, musical, 229–​30, 405 funeral march, 230 horn fifths, 233 horror, 230n9, 528, 552 hunting, 232–​33, 236, 266, 269, 273–​74 military, xixn25, 236, 550 pastoral, 236, 273–​74, 552 tragédie lyrique, 260, 273, 439 transposition, of a piece, 1, 6–​7, 217, 252–​ 54, 294, 372, 386, 404–​5, 469–​71, 491 trio of keys, 266, 273, 281, 288, 294, 321, 423, 552 (see also tonal pairing) tritone substitution, 280 Venice, xix, xxiii, 6, 9, 187–​88, 250–​51, 293, 371, 378, 441 verse–​prechorus–​chorus (form), 21–​23 versification, 40, 42, 58, 87–​90, 184 (see also meter, poetic) versi sciolti, see meter, poetic Vienna, xvii–​xviii, 6, 9, 200, 216, 230n9, 231n10, 295n19, 372, 374, 385–​86, 397, 398 (see also Austria)