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R a p o p What is it that makes Mendelssohn’s music o r recognizably unique? This study hopes to t make a contribution to the answer through an M analysis of an extensive sample of Mendelssohn’s E instrumental music. I identify a compositional N practice which I believe to be a hallmark of his D style: the smoothing over of formal junctures E of various types. By and large, Mendelssohn’s L S dynamic treatment of formal junctures reflects a S general concern with enhancing continuity and O momentum in longer forms, a compositional H issue that has always presented a challenge to N composers in the Western music tradition. The ’S main purpose of our investigation, then, is to de- I N lineate the specific techniques that Mendelssohn used in his characteristic effort to bridge over S T formal divisions. Numerous of Mendelssohn’s R works reveal a clear (and evidently deliberate) U propensity to create larger continuities by means M of bridging over divisions, regardless of the for- E mal prototype or level of structure. At the same N time, an almost Mozartian clarity of form often is T preserved. This might at first seem contradictory, A but Mendelssohn, as I shall attempt to demon- L strate, was able to find ingenious ways of having M his his cake and eating it, too. U From The Introduction S I MENDELSSOHN’S C PENDRAGON PRESS • HILLSDALE, NY I N S T R U M E N TA L MUSIC P E N • D R A Erez Rapoport G O N HARMONOLOGIA SERIES NO. 18 Mendelssohn’s Instrumental Music Structure and Style Erez Rapoport (1959-2009) Mendelssohn’s Instrumental Music Structure and Style Erez Rapoport HARMONOLOGIA: STUDIES IN MUSIC THEORY No. 18 PENDRAGON PRESS Hillsdale, NY Other Titles in the Series HARMONOLOGIA: STUDIES IN MUSIC THEORY No. 1 Heinrich Schenker: An Annotated Index To His Analyses of Musical Works by Lawrence Laskowski No. 2 Marpurg’s Thoroughbass and Composition Handbook: A Narrative Translation and Critical Study by David A. Sheldon No. 3 Between Modes and Keys: German Theory 1592-1802 by Joel Lester No. 4 Music Theory from Zarlino to Schenker: A Bibliography and Guide by David Damschroder and David Russell Williams No. 5 Musical Time: The Sense of Order by Barbara Barry No. 6 Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition (revised edition) by Sharon Kanach No. 7 Esquisse de Histoire de Harmonie: An English-Language Translation of the François-Joseph Fétis History by Mary I. Arlin No. 8 Analyzing Fugue: A Schenkerian Approach by Wiliam Renwick No. 9 Bach ‘s Modal Chorales by Lori Burns No. 10 Treatise on Melody by Anton Reicha, Translated by Peter Landy No. 11 A Topical Guide to Schenkerian Literature: An Annotated Bibliography with Indices by David Carson Berry No. 12 Structure and Meaning in Tonal Music: A Festschrift for Carl Schachter edited by Poundie Burstein and David Gagné No. 13 Complete Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Harmony (1844) by François-Joseph Fétis, translated by Peter Landy No. 14 Music Theory from Boethius to Zarlino: A Bibliography and Guide by Matthew Balensuela and David Russell Williams No. 15 Analyzing Jazz: A Schenkerian Approach by Steve Larson No. 16 The Power of the Moment: Essays on the Western Musical Canon by Martin Boykan No. 17 Johann David Heinichen’s Comprehensive Instruction on Basso Continuo with Historical Biographies, translated and compiled by Benedikt Brilmayer and Casey Mongoven Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rapoport, Erez, 1959-2009. Mendelssohn’s instrumental music : structure and style / Erez Rapoport. p. cm. -- (Harmonologia:studies in music theory ; no. 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-57647-211-8 (alk. paper) 1. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, 1809-1847. Instrumental music. 2. Instrumental music--History and criticism. I. Title. ML410.M5R29 2012 784.092--dc23 2012037228 Copyright 2012 Pendragon Press CONTENTS Preface by Carl Schachter vii Editor’s Introduction ix Introduction xiii Chapter 1: Phrase and Subphrase Overlap 1 Chapter 2: Unusual Treatment of the Reprise in Small Forms 37 Chapter 3: Deviations from the Norms at the Beginning of the 73 Recapitulation in Sonata Forms Chapter 4: Joining Together Other Sections in Sonata Forms 105 Chapter 5: Linking Movements in Multi-Movement Works 131 Chapter 6: Summary: Historical Perspective 157 Index 181 v PrEfaCE by Carl Schachter Erez Rapoport, music theorist and teacher, died in Tel Aviv on November 23, 2009. Erez was born in November of 1959 in Ein Gedi, Israel. His early musical education was in Israel: he studied at Tel Aviv University and privately with Menachem Wiesenberg. In 1985 he transferred to the Mannes College of Music in New York, receiving a Bachelor of Music degree in 1987 and a Master of Music degree the following year. Erez was the first graduate student at Mannes to major in theory. He entered the PhD Program of the City University of New York in the fall of 1988. Upon finishing his course work and exams, he returned to Israel to teach. (He was on the faculties of the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music of Tel Aviv University and Lewinsky College.) He started serious work on his dissertation—the present book—quite a bit later, completing the doctorate in 2004. I first met him during his years at Mannes; he was in my analysis classes there. At CUNY, he worked with me both in classes and in private tutorials; so I got to know him really well. We became close friends; and the thousands of miles that separated us when he moved back to Israel did not disrupt our friendship. Erez was a wonderfully gifted musician and teacher. He had an extraordinarily keen and sensitive ear, a fantastic musical memory that encompassed huge swaths of the repertory, and a rare combination of clear-headed common sense and creative imagina- tion in his musical ideas. In this book, Erez focuses on an important feature of Mendels- sohn’s music: the smoothing over of formal boundaries. The segments that are fused together by this process can be units of all possible dimensions from short phrases to entire movements. Although it is true that all the techniques that Mendelssohn employs in smoothing over boundaries are also to be found in the music of his predecessors and contemporaries, it would probably be safe to say that no other composer makes such a salient feature of this device as Mendelssohn, or uses it with such variety and imagina- tion. And because one cannot locate formal boundaries without taking into account harmony, voice leading, and rhythm, Erez’s precisely defined central topic gives the reader an entrée into Mendelssohn’s compositional style as a whole. Erez makes wonderful use of the principles of Schenkerian analysis in his clear and simple analytic diagrams. Together with William Rothstein’s Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, this book is a brilliant demonstration of the possibility of fusing sophisticated analysis of tonal structure and equally sophisticated style criticism. This is especially evident in the last chapter, where Erez makes fascinating comparisons of Mendelssohn’s proce- dures with those of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, and Brahms. In an age that pays lip service to “authenticity,” Erez stood out as a truly original human being who dared to be himself. He devoted his energies to those things that were most important to him: his family, his friends, his musical scholarship, and his teach- ing. He had no patience with academic politics, and he was profoundly uninterested in furthering his career. He was singularly modest, unpretentious, and direct in his deal- ings with people; and in his quiet way he was a thoroughgoing non-conformist. Indeed vii Mendelssohn’s InstruMental MusIc he carried his modesty too far. He never tried to get his scholarly work published, and he seldom attended professional conferences. As a result, too few of his colleagues throughout the world were aware of the brilliant work he was doing. This splendid posthumous publication will now make Erez’s achievements available to a wider circle of scholarly and practical musicians. viii EDITOr’S INTrODuCTION New Paths In content and organization, Erez Rapaport’s dissertation on Mendelssohn’s compositional style remains just as the author left it before his death a few weeks before his fiftieth birthday. A minimum of revision was undertaken to improve readability. Because this important book was written as an academic exercise, it offers its most important conclusions as afterthoughts. The editor is constrained to remain faithful to the manu- script, but is otherwise at liberty to observe that the afterthoughts, presented in a final chapter on historical perspectives, comprise an important contribution to the way we hear the music of the great masters. What is the purpose of form in tonal music? It leads the listener into the music with a set of expectations concerning how a piece will begin, develop and conclude. Musical form, Heinrich Schenker taught, runs parallel to the tonal content of the voice- leading. That is now taught in all major universities. Beyond the coherence of musical form and voice-leading content, though, there remains the elusive matter of musical style. Schenker’s motto was “Semper idem sed non eodem modo” – always the same, but not in the same way. If the form and tonal content of classical and early Romantic music follows the same rules, what is it that distinguishes the musical personality of a Mendelssohn from that of a Mozart or a Schumann? The present book makes an enormous and highly original contribution to the answer. A hallmark of compositional style, Erez Rapaport argues, is found in the treatment of formal tonal junctures. The great composers play with their listeners’ expectations arising from form, but in different ways and to different effects. The rules of form are there to be broken, but not broken in an arbitrary way: the way in which different composers smooth over formal junctures is key to the composition effect they wish to achieve. Schenker’s analytical approach to voice-leading is indispensable to investigation of form, because it identifies where tonal goals may diverge from the formal junctures with which they are expected to coincide. Most of Dr. Rapaport’s book, of course, is devoted to a comprehensive review of Mendelssohn’s approach to formal junctures in a wide variety of musical forms. This remarkable body of investigation is conducted in the service of an ambitious project: to understand how the “subjective” feel of musical style arises from compositional prac- tices that can be identified analytically. As the author explains: Mendelssohn habitually evades expected divisions between formal units. These consis- tent efforts to avoid the expected norms with regard to certain formal boundaries are an unmistakable feature of his personal style. In trying to assess this salient feature, we can perhaps view the effect of smoothing over formal divisions as a unique synthesis, resulting from Mendelssohn’s attempt to reconcile two apparently contradictory principles of composition: first, the Baroque ideal of constant motion, momentum, and growth (especially relevant in this respect are genres which habitually feature a one-part tonal structure, such as binary forms and fugues); secondly, the Classical standard of clear formal articulation, which often yields distinct division and repetition; this is the ix