Gesture, Tropes and Topics

Mutualist relationship P3

Relationships across silence-> form and texture

The new focus on musical meaning

Musicologists reorientation -> Fully interpret P4

Part 1 and 2 P8

Dichotomy between structure and expression P9

Diagrama P11

Markedness P12

If a composer choose a binary distinction, there is not a more profound sense

Musical gesture P93

Elemets of the pastoral:

 the pastoral process of putting the complex into the simple.

a search for simplicity away from a complexity

 association with a separate, idealized space or time.

implies the presence of its opposite, the more complex urban world of a present reality

 the pastoral of the self

the move away from the bucolic Italian concern with passion and sex to a more philosophical
development of the themes of melancholy and solitude.

 Change on the landscape.

is no longer simply the evocation of the beauties and the delights of a pastoral existence, nor the
virtuosity of the artist’s imitation of the objects of Nature. It is no more idealized.

 Mollified tension and intensity

undercutting of expressive climaxes or softening of climaxes

Schubert’s lyricism is compatible with the pastoral topic.

Trope: lyrical pastoral genre with the dramatic genre of the sonata

Musical gestures: pedal point, slow harmonic rhythm, simple melodic contour with gentle climax,
compound meter, major mode, parallel thirds, modal inflections, and subdominant inflection.

Simplicity as opposed to complexity

there are the imitations of birdcalls and conventional horn fifth= express absence and regret, and the
distance of a landscape or forest as well as its pastoral character.

Markedness: The shift to B minor (because of the allusion to beethoven’s fourth piano concierto, you
would expect the shift to B major, also because of the bright character of the beginning)

Tropes: Pastoral fanfare (the neighbor notes of the right hand), pastoral hymn (the sustain sonority,
subdominant emphasis, and simple texture), pastoral and waltz (there might appear to be a
contradiction between the solitude of pastoral and the social element of a more urban dance, however
it is a topical allusion to the intimate music-making Schubert shared at the piano with his friends during
his evening Schubertiades [offered a pastoral oasis from the stresses or alienating effects of urban
society.]).

Trope:

Pastoral and hymn: slow harmonic rhythm, pedal point, simple melodic contour with gentle climax,
emphasis of the subdominant, and plagal motion.

I movement:

First theme: Sustained tonic, Subdominant emphasis, “pastoral fanfare”, the hymnlike dignity of a
sustained sonority, slow harmonic rhythm. We have the tragic disruption of the b minor, instead of the
B mayor

Second theme: The slow harmonic rhythm, siciliano rhythmic figure, simple stepwise melodic gestures,
long-range pedal point, hypnotic reiterations of motivic and rhythmic figures, slow move to a melodic
climax. The climactic resolution to tonic in m. 36 is undercut by the decrescendo

Development: from major to minor produces a sense of engaged struggle in a present reality. The first
and second themes are pitted dialectically against

II movement:

The simple octave doubling of the melodic line, the bald accompaniment. (pastoral)

Another intrusion of a B minor section

III movement:

Beginning with the tragic theme in b minor.

Trio: Landler rhythmic gesture, the stasis of the triple pedal, the merging of pastoral with waltz. The ppp
dynamics in the trio further support the analogy of an intimate acoustic space with an inner
psychological state

IV movement:

Modal inflection (Lydian with the sharp 4), pedal on G, slow harmonic rhythm, the melodic circling, the
parallel tenths, the melodic a plagal motion I–IV–I over a pedal V, the drumbeat echo suggests a rustic
accompaniment to the melody (m. 9) (this rhythmic gesture is intended as an allusion to the repeated-
chord motif from the B minor Menuetto, or the repeated chords in the B minor contrasting theme from
the Andante, the previously tragic connotation is appropriately mollified by soft dynamics and a major
mode setting.

“Sonate” to “Fantasie oder Sonate,” by Schubert or the editor, and it was advertised as “Fantasie,
Andante und Allegretto,” referring to the first, second, and fourth movements

the exposition, while remarkably regular in tonal and thematic construction, sounds anything but
normal, since the expressive treatment of thematic ideas eludes the structural rhythms and
developmental rhetoric of sonata. The development section, on the other hand, is perhaps weakened by
an overly forced dramatic rhetoric, burdening themes that had previously escaped such generic
treatment.

Trope:

Pastoral and hymn: slow harmonic rhythm, pedal point, simple melodic contour with gentle climax,
emphasis of the subdominant, and plagal motion.