Transcript

Robert Samuels

You've just been looking at how we can analyse melodies which actually contain two or more different harmonic voices within a single melodic line. This is a common feature of the sort of baroque figuration used by Bach or Vivaldi, and you might think that this sort of harmony is only found in baroque music. But in this video section we're going to look at examples where Mozart constructs a melody which contains two separate harmonic lines, despite the much less contrapuntal style of Classical period music, which is normally a theme and an accompaniment.

This sort of voice-leading process is called ‘unfolding’. This means that two notes which harmonise with each other are ‘unfolded’ as an interval within the melodic line. Sometimes the two notes of the unfolding come one after another, as was the case in the baroque examples; but sometimes the unfolded interval is filled in with passing notes or neighbour notes.

The first extract which we are going to analyse is the little four-bar section which we looked at right at the beginning of Unit 3:

You remember that we saw how the smooth elegance of this rondo melody comes from the downwards line from F natural to C natural. [play F–E flat–D–C] [play melody through emphasising downwards line]. It is this that gives the extract its shape. Now let’s look a bit more closely at how this line fits into the rest of the melody.

The most striking feature of this opening is the interval of a downward seventh between the last two notes. (Plays downward 7th) So what is it that makes this surprising leap sound part of a balanced melody? The answer lies in an overall harmonic line – that is, a harmonic voice. But this isn't the F to E flat line we have analysed already at the top of the harmony, but a second, lower voice. The melody of the first bar outlines an arpeggio of B flat – the tonic chord – and, just as the top note, the F (plays), falls to the E flat at the beginning of bar two, so the lower note, the B flat (plays), falls to the A natural which is the lower note in that leap of a seventh [graphic for this]. In other words, this melody [play bb. 1–2] outlines these two intervals [play F/B flat–E flat/A: graphic for this].

Now let’s look at bar three. You'll remember that the foreground of the music is a string of appoggiaturas, or accented neighbour-notes [play b. 3 melody], so that the harmonic line is this [play B flat–C–D–E flat]. The elegance and balance of the melody comes from this structure which our analysis uncovers as being made up of two parts: a structural upper voice and a structural alto voice – that is, two voices in which each note leads to the next. That is where voice-leading analysis gets its name from.

So, let’s recap. Our analysis is saying that Mozart’s melody is based on a harmonic progression which is in two parts, made up of these three intervals: [play the three intervals – graphic]. These intervals are ‘unfolded’ like this [play F–B flat–E flat–A–B flat–D – graphic of these], and then they’re filled in with an arpeggiation [fill in b. 1], a consonant skip [fill in b. 2], and a passing note [fill in b.2 passing note] with appoggiaturas as ornamentation [fill in appoggiaturas: play bb. 1–3].

One final comment about the harmony here. You may be wondering how we can claim that the E flat in bar two (plays) harmonises with the A natural later in the bar, because the G natural shows that this E flat is part of a C minor chord, (plays) and not the dominant seventh chord on F [highlight these notes]. Well, this is quite true; and in fact, the B flat at the end of bar one is also harmonised differently from the F at the beginning, with a G minor chord (plays) following the tonic B flat chord [highlight & play these notes]. We haven’t ignored these harmonies; what our analysis says is that these chords – G minor and C minor – are subsidiary to the B flat and F chords. The idea of subsidiary harmonies is what makes this a middleground analysis and not a foreground one.