Commentary on Samuel Ng’s review of Peter H. Smith’s Expressive Forms in Brahms’s Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in His Werther Quartet

Abstract

[1] I would like to address an analytic idea proposed by Samuel Ng in his review of Peter Smith's monograph on Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor. In his discussion of opening of first movement, Ng takes issue with Smith's reading of G-major chord in bar 21 as dominant. Instead, he says that appearance of this chord comes as an unexpected surprise. Not only does he call it the first striking harmonic event of piece, but he also later describes it as truly expressive gesture that eludes virtually any structural explanation. Furthermore, he suggests that G chord appearing two bars later (bar 23) is more natural continuation. Ng attempts to find an integral relationship between form and content, and to reveal structural intricacies that may well embody expressive connotations. His analytic reading of opening theme is, however, surely incorrect. Not only is G-major chord in bar 21 long-expected dominant, but it is G chord that offers unexpected surprise. I wish to address this issue not just in order to present yet another alternative reading, but because correct interpretation of opening of this Brahms Piano Quartet evokes an important Classical tonal procedure that both Smith and Ng overlook in their analyses.[2] One of striking features at beginning of Brahms Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor is quadrupled B that appears in bar 11, after half cadence on dominant. It transposes four-octave C at start of piece down a whole step, and ushers in return of opening theme in key of B-flat minor. Before examining tonal structure of antecedent part of Quartet (bars 1-31), I would like to discuss convention of this opening gesture.[3] The opening theme of Brahms is modeled after Classical construction of two parallel phrases in which second repeats opening at a different pitch level. The most usual procedure is to repeat second phrase a whole step above initial statement. In Mozart's Piano Sonata in D, K. 576, for example, rising arpeggio of opening theme announced in D major is answered by another statement of arpeggiated theme in E minor (Example 1). In order to avoid parallel fifths and octaves in voice-leading from I to II, a dominant chord appearing at end of opening phrase serves as a voice-leading corrective. The beginning of Brahms's Symphony No. 2, op. 73, has a similar construction, but here a B-minor chord, resulting from a 5-6 contrapuntal motion, breaks up potential parallels between two statements of opening theme in D major and E minor (Example 2).Example 1. Mozart, Piano Sonata in D, K. 576, i (bars 1-6)(click to enlarge and see rest)Example 2. Brahms, Symphony no. 2 in D, i (bars 1-11)(click to enlarge and see rest)[4] While parallel construction of two phrases on adjacent ascending steps appears rather frequently in major mode, reverse situation, of answering a phrase down by step, occurs much less often. In fact, in major, an answering phrase on VII is not possible if it remains in its normal form as a diminished triad. In order to enable such a repetition, must be chromatically altered to , transforming VII into a major triad.(1) The beginning of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata presents such a procedure; following opening theme's initial statement in tonic C major, it appears four bars later in B-flat major. Example 3 shows how a contrapuntal 5-6 motion breaks up potential parallels in stepwise motion from I to VII. At foreground level, intervening chord in this contrapuntal progression is tonicized by an applied chord.[5] The initial statement of opening theme at beginning of Waldstein would appear to lead to its repeated statement in B-flat. However, first four bars are repeated over bars 5-8, and a descending chromatic bass results. …