Sentences with Words: Text and Theme-Type in Die schone Mullerin

This article analyzes Carl Czerny’s exemplars for fantasizing in Systematische Anleitung zum Fantasieren auf dem Pianoforte (1829). I argue that a musical prototype combining scale-degree schemata (Meyer 1980, Gjerdingen 2007) and sentential features (Caplin 1998) emerges as an implicit knowledge structure in several of Czerny’s notated musical examples that demonstrate how to react to a given theme for improvisation. Through an examination of notated fantasies recommended by Czerny as models for extemporizing, I propose a beginning-of-fantasy prototype, which allows us to discern improvisatory qualities in Beethoven’s notated “artworks” such as the Tempest sonata, the Appassionata, and others.

In Search of Carl Czerny’s Schemata: Listening to Early Nineteenth-Century Improvisation

Rabinovitch¹

2022

Lyricist as Analyst: Rhyme Scheme as Music-Setting in the Great American Songbook

Lawrence

2023

Although most songwriting teams in the Great American Songbook wrote music first and lyrics second, most studies of music-text interaction in this repertoire still evince a lyrics-first mindset, in which the music is viewed as text-setting. In this article, I propose the opposite approach: considering lyrics as a form of music-setting, in which the lyricist’s superimposition of a verbal form (the rhyme scheme) upon the composer’s pre-existing musical form counts as an act of analysis. I examine in turn: (1) the most common phrase structures and their associated rhyme schemes in songs from 1919 to 1943; (2) Lorenz Hart’s negotiation of the unusual XYYZ phrase structure that Richard Rodgers frequently employed; and (3) special cases where the lyricist contests the composer’s form and the effect that this can have on performers’ choices.

Schubert’s Idyllic Periods

Rodgers¹

2017

This article explores Schubert's distinctive handling of the period theme-type, focusing on a particular kind of period that appears often in his Lieder: the idyllic period. Schubert's idyllic periods are characterized by their symmetry, diatonicism, transparent voice-leading structure, simple piano texture, and association with poems about nostalgia and hopefulness. I analyze three representative idyllic periods in Schubert's late songs: "Am Meer" (looking not only at the song itself, but also at its relation to the other Heine Lieder from Schwanengesang), "So lasst mich scheinen," and "Am Fenster." Collectively, these analyses reveal the diverse but related expressive connotations of this theme-type in Schubert's music. Moreover, they suggest that Schubert's musical evocations of naïveté and innocence demand as much scrutiny as his most radical experiments with tonality and form.