Encounters with the Chromatic Fourth...

or, More on Figurenlehre, 1

Author(s): Peter Williams
Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 126, No. 1707 (May, 1985), pp. 276-278
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/961304
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 Encounters with the Chromatic Fourth
... or, More on Figurenlehre, 1
Peter Williams

Various publications have delved more deeply into this ascending for 'And Israel by Philistine Arms shall fall' in
Saul) to latterday theorists, one of whom (Sabatini, 1802)
interesting area since 1979 when I wrote briefly on it in four
numbers of MT (June, July, August, October); those essays showed that it could be a positive, firm theme suitable for
themselves were only a manifestation of the growing interest'et vitam venturi saeculi' in the Creed. But the theme was
in a subject around which much has been written in the also one suitable for counterpoint per se, particularly of
last three or four decades (see list of references at the endkeyboard counterpoint of no possible programmatic intent.
for some examples). However, these studies and disserta- One of those oratorio themes of Handel above is itself based
on an earlier keyboard fugue, and not the least interesting
tions - that is to say, the productions of scholars and writers
in general - are largely geared to therhetorical theory, or detail in the makeup ofJ.S. Bach's Art of Fugue is that despite
what is fancied to be such, behind the musical patterns or its key (D minor, the 'original' key for the Chromatic 4th)
motifs concerned: to study the melodic and harmonic cells and its encyclopedic variety (over 20 pieces based on a theme
of music, especially that of the 17th century and early 18th,going through many kinds of contrapuntal treatment) he
is to study the blocks from which one builds a hypothesis is so sparing with it. When he does use the Chromatic 4th,
about a composer's knowledge of and inspiration drawn from it takes the form of countersubjects to one or other thema
Rules of Rhetoric. J.S. Bach in particular is a beneficiary- for example, ex.la, b and c. Other chromatic ideas are
from or victim of (depending on one's viewpoint) wonder- Ex. 1

ful hypotheses of this kind: I am thinking of such seductive a)

but totally unfounded theories as that The Musical Offering

- o.3
is in some sense based on the writings of the Roman
rhetorician Quintilianus (Kirkendale) or that the Passacaglia
b)
is in some sense based on the Christian numerologies of
Werckmeister (Kee).
Of course, in the broad sense any piece of good music
is 'rhetorical': rhetoric is the name for the art of effectivec) (inversion)
expression. But one can have a quite false idea of the
significance of rhetoric by studying - as many American ,go,
and German students are encouraged to do - the work of
these old theorists who look in from the outside on the developed in The Art of Fugue, and it is as if the composer
mysteries of composition and can no more fully comprehend
deliberately avoided the standard formula. That it was a stan-
the great composers of their day than musical grammarians
dard formula, or at least - since that phase today suggests
obsessed with the wickedness of unprepared 9ths couldsomething not quite to a composer's credit - a motif of
understand Wagner. In fact, 'rhetoric' and 'grammar' are natural interest to J.S. Bach, is clear from a moment in the
comparable attributes, equally important, that is to say,C major Prelude from Book II of the '48', where according
basic. One can no more demonstrate a link between Bach to the autograph copy now in the British Library (Add.
and a rhetorician by showing his music to be rhetorically35921, f.1; see Daw and Franklin) he made a Chromatic
shaped than one demonstrates a link between Shakespeare 4th in D minor only as an afterthought (ex.2).
and some grammarian by showing that sentences in Hamlet
Ex. 2
have a subject, verb and object. a),

Rather, therefore, than find examples of certain musical

devices (motifs, cells, rhythms, patterns, figurae) in order
to use them as demonstrations of how much attention com-
posers paid to theorists, I would like to point out some par-
ticular examples of one of thosefigurae, the Chromatic 4th,
with a view to showing how composers have taken common-
b) (revised as)
property ideas to heart. It is clear that the Chromatic 4th
did frequently have associations of 'mood' or even a par- 11-

ticular 'programme', from the late 16th-century Italian (and

then English) madrigalists, through Schiitz (texts concern-
irlF ! ido , 1 d O
ing sin, in Kleine geistliche Konzerte) and Handel (descend-
ing in 'They loathed to drink of the river' in Israel in Egypt,
276

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 Ex. 5
Of course, Bach and his contemporaries grew up with
music making use of the Chromatic 4th, whether vocal
S Piano 1 8va sopraetc.
(Schtitz, Scheidt, Tunder etc) or keyboard (Scheidt, Krieger,
Buxtehude etc), and one can imagine that organists always Piano 2

found the theme in its various forms useful for counterpoint,

either as a subject in its own right or as a countersubject,
particularly in so-called permutation fugues (e.g. the chorus Pianos 1,2 Pianos 1,2 (stated twice)
in the early Cantata 131, also known in an 18th-century
transcription for organ, BWV131a). So did English and point. Mozart used it solely for that purpose right at the
end of a very exuberant D major work, the Sonata for two
Dutch organists of c1600 (see MT July 1979) and French
organists of c1700. G. Jullien (Livre d'orgue, 1690) speaks pianos or harpsichords K448 (see ex.5). Not only is the
of the 'chromatic pieces in the first tone' (D minor) as if theme marked 'Coda' but the composer even slurred it -
they were a matter of course, a genre in themselves, and by no means a common detail in Mozart's keyboard music
it is clear enough that G.-G. Nivers (Livres d'orgue, 1665, of this period. The slur conforms to (perhaps even alludes
1667, 1675) gave a model fugue grave when he decorated to?) the legato treatment given the occasional chromatic
the Chromatic 4th as in ex.3. phrase in otherwise bright, extrovert music in much older
Ex. 3 keyboard repertories (e.g. Buxtehude's Gelobet seist du,
BUXWV 188).
- i 9 -'. After D minor (mode 1), the two keys most to be associated
with the Chromatic 4th were G minor and A minor (modes
Perhaps more interesting,2 andhowever, are
3), and one can assume that the orchestral
many appearances of it
works of the period that turn
in C minorto the
and even theme
F minor as
were meant a particularly
to be kind of D
minor formula. One of the 'sad'.most striking
Although that examples
might not always is the
be so in, say, Italian
finale to Vivaldi's Concerto in D minor from L'estro
violin sonatas (where B minor or even more remote keys
armonico, op.3 no.11, where, after appearing in various
might carry the Chromatic 4th in works of Albinoni, Cor-
guises earlier, it is used to round off the concertoelli
(ex.4).
and others), it would be so in German cantatas or
Ex. 4
keyboard music (e.g. the F minor lamento in the B flat
Capriccio BWV992) and even, so one can assume, in the
anthems of English composers like Blow and Croft (where
modes 1, 2 and 3 are normal). In the G major Quartet K387,
Mozart used the theme in several keys and for several pur-
SI
poses; as episode material (first and last movements), as a
theme (minuet!), as a theme to be harmonized or to be
imitated contrapuntally. But 'sadness' is far from this quartet
and indeed it must come as something of a surprise to those
who examine the work to see just how much chromaticism
it does contain: one's abiding impression of K387 is hardly
(stated twice)
that of melancholy. One can see the quartet as - whatever
else it is - a 'vindication' by a very alert composer of the
I have given it in ex.6 in the version transcribed by J.S. Bach
Chromatic 4th's legacy: a passage like that in ex.6 seems
(Organ Concerto BWV596.iv) as a reminder that Italian
consciously to counter this tradition, reminding one of the
instrumental music had a currency far more basic than, for
woodwind lines in Mozart's mature orchestral works (e.g.
example, French: an English or German composer might
each movement of the G minor Symphony).
imitate the French styles, but the Italian were intrinsic. Of
Ex. 6
wider influence than anything French, for example, was the
fine use that Albinoni made of standard formulae (Suonate Lil ii',,
a tre op.1, 1694), formulae like the Chromatic 4th and the
little off-beat figura suspirans (see MT Aug 1979). That
poorer Italian composers of the 18th century pulled the
Chromatic 4th out of the drawer, as it were, whenever they
wanted sad music is clear from conventional organ interludes
composed for Requiem masses (e.g. the Pistoian repertory, AICI
ed. U. Pineschi); any composer of any period could guarantee
the effect produced by the figure if he used it slowly. But
to a good composer, particularly interesting would have been
the air of finality that the Chromatic 4th can bring with
it to vigorous, lively music; the Vivaldi in ex.4 is a case in cresc, ?
.1 t

277

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 DONNA ANNA
One can only assume the key associations to have been
very strong, however far beneath the conscious level. For Ex. 8 yam- mi.on deg- gian- do il cor
example, Haydn has it in F major in his motet Insanae et
vanae curae, but only as a relative to D minor: tonus primus
DON OTTAVIO
still governs it. Of course, Haydn's employing a figura -
false relation, for example - for the purposes of word-
painting or word-marking is only to be expected, and (passage stated twice)
examples are not hard to find. The tradition was quite ver-
5 - 11), and when the Commendatore has been killed,
satile enough to include both secular and sacred words, ever
as if Mozart could not help but bring in the kind off
since (for example) Monteverdi's use of the madrigalists'
(now foreshortened) that coloured countless requiems
Chromatic 4th for his 'Crucifixus' from the Mass In illo
other solemn occasions (ex.8). The D minor itself is all
tempore. Haydn's awareness of composition byfigurae is clear
and one can expect the chromatic line in operatic D m
enough from the phrase perfiguram retardationis in the slow
elsewhere (e.g. the Queen of Night's aria in Act 2 of
movement of the F minor Quartet op.20 no.5, drawing atten-
tion to the first violinist's decorations that have the effect Zauberfl'te). Composers in other traditions - such as G
for his French Iphiginie - are as likely to use the Chrom
of 'delaying' the harmony note (in The Art of Fugue, Bach
4th in other keys, more en passant, the (usually) descen
would have used merely a slur, then a far less common sign).
lines giving the required pathos (examples in G minor
Such 'retardations' had been spoken of by J.G. Walther
A minor in Act 1 oflphiginie en Tauride), particularly if
(Praecepta, 1708), though not by Fux, a copy of whose
is a bit of alla breve counterpoint of an antique
Gradus adParnassum Haydn owned and to which his 'figural
somewhere in the neighbourhood. But Mozart's usag
awareness' is generally attributed. Haydn so often gives the
not mere antiquarianism; nor are those to be describe
appearance of composing with the kind of fine detail - the
my next article.
allusions and the surprises - recognizable to fellow profes-
(to be concluded)
sionals that it is not easy to be sure one has caught all his
allusions and nudgings. But the Chromatic 4th ex tonoprimo REFERENCES
in the slow movement of Symphony no.92 must surely beL.A. Sabbatini: Trattato sopra le fiughe musicali (Venice, 1802)
one such 'nudging' (ex.7). It marks the link to the recapitula- W. Budday: 'Musikalische Figuren als satztechnische Freiheiten in Bachs Orgel
tion, like that in the first movement of Beethoven's Violin "Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt" ', Bach-Jahrbuch, lxiii (1977), 13
Concerto a few years later (see MT July 1979) or like the U. Pineschi, ed.: .Musiche Pistoiesi per Organo (Brescia and Kassel, 1978)
link into the first Allegro in Mozart's Prague Symphony. G.J. Buelow: 'Rhetoric and Music', The New Grove
The same Chromatic 4ths in Don Giovanni are fine examples Stephen Daw and Don Franklin, eds.: Johann Sebastian Bach: Das Wohhteimp
Clavier, ii (London, 1980) [facs. edn.]
of other kinds of allusiveness: the very opening bars of the U. Kirkendale: 'The Sources for Bach's Musical Offering: the Institutio or
D minor overture set out on the chromatic descent (bb. of Quintilian', JAMS, xxxiii (1980), 88-141
I. Godt: 'Italian Figurenlehre? Music and Rhetoric in a New York Source', Stu
dolce in the History of Music, i (1982)
Piet Kee: 'Die Geheimnisse von Bachs Passacaglia', Musik und Kirche, lii (
A J--- 165 - 75, 235 - 44
-AdL? ?6-

Lena Jacobson: 'Musical Rhetoric in Buxtehude's Free Organ Works', Organ Y

book, xiii (1982), 60-79
F. Noske: 'Affectus, Figura and Modal Structure in Constantijn Huygens's Pat
Tijdschrift der Vereniging van Nederlandse Muziekgeschliedenis (1982)

Retrospect and Prospect: Milner at 60

Stephen Dodgson
Any music Anthony Milner may have written asidein adoles-
the youthful things (which I suspect to have been very
cence, or during his years as a student at the romantic) in knowledge that his op. 1, the cantata Salutatio
Royal College
of Music in the immediately postwar period, has angelica,
never represented
been an unmistakable maturity. It contains
allowed to see the light of day. In conversation he shows
no lapses from a remarkable level of musical quality. In the
no inclination to mention it. There are really handling and balance of its forces it sounds like the work
no formative
years; once studentship was behind him, Milner of a was
composer
fullyof twice the experience. Above all, its struc-
mature in the creative sense and as authoritative as he is ture is beautifully poised, without hint of effort or artifice
now. This may indeed have made it easier for him to put in achieving an ingenious relationship of musical elements,
278

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