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LB
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Hello all,
ReplyDeleteNothing profound here, but I found the harmonic structure of the 2nd movement of the Sammartini Symphony quite interesting. Definitely not a Gallant collections of progressions. If anyone wants to comment I'll respond with my analysis of the chords and how they were arrived at. It's an interesting look at how the gallant and empfindsammer stil styles can share realestate in a piece.
Jay
I'd be very interested in getting to read what you found. My own cursory analysis shows a rather interesting progression that I wouldn't have expected in music this early. That isn't to say it isn't commonplace, I've never analysized much before Haydn that wasn't Bach so this is new territory for me. In the key of G minor (ignoring inversions for the sake a of clearer presentation), bVI - V7/V - iidim - iv - V. That's up to the first fermata. Now the way I percieve all of this is as three (I would group the iidim and the iv chord together as they are functionally the same chord in my mind, at least here), unrelated ways of preceding or preparing the dominant harmony on the fermata. The chords don't necessarily flow well into one another in terms of voice leading, the leap of a tritone in the soprano is evidence enough. Also it wouldn't seem like the secondary dominant is resolving, but I would say they are all just being left unresolved and building tension up to their resolution at the fermata. After that it seems much more linear, i - V7/V - V7 - V7/iv - iv - Ger+6 - V. The five chord resolving messily as the leading tone was in the base and completely skips tonic and instead moves down to the lowered seventh. I would agree that the aural affect of the part up to the fermata and the dominant seventh chords resolving into each other in the second half is striking, but a little circle of fifths motion never hurt anybody, and all the chords in the first half do resolve eventually, just in a delayed sort of way.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would percieve to be more in line with the empfindsamer stil would be the sort of ornamental, i.e. non-functional (that is to say not functioning in chords, it's still easily explainable), chromaticism of the Benda. On beat three of bar three as we heard it live in class, the Eb that was part of the dominant seventh harmony on the second beat is joined by a C# so that we have upper and lower leading tones to the D to which the Eb resolves. This is followed immediately by an F# and an Ab which have presumably a similar funcion in relation to the G that comes on the and of the first beat of the next bar. This second occurence occurs without hardly any harmony by which to deduce the intended harmonic function of the notes in question (F# and Ab), but at the same their function in the melody seems clear to me as being to ornament the G. This G represents the complete arrival of the IV chord to be followed immediatly on beat three by V-I.
To me I would probably think of the difference as being a mostly melodic one, because although there are harmonic inconsistencies between the two styles I think they're subtle ones. At first glance it seems like a lot more of the Benda piece's harmonies are implied or incomplete, as opposed to those of the sammartini which are all complete chords. That's just at a first look, I wouldn't presume any of this to apply outside these two pieces before looking at a much larger range of music.
Don