Author: brycon
Date: 2017-07-24 22:08
Quote:
My inflation-adjusted 2-cents, sans such a good image, is that I've most lately wanted to decrescendo the descent sequence in tiers, like separate voices, followed by the rising triplets in crescendo through the A trill, with full emphasis on the final G. Sort of like passing through uncertainty to (relative) surety. That's the first time the descent sequence occurs.
The second time seems to me decidedly more triumphal, and (lately) I like the four descending tiers to be equal in surety, like four antiphonal voices all proclaiming accord, so I keep their dynamic level equal. But, hmm!
Well, both instances are harmonically identical: they're cadential 6/4s. You could say the second one, in the key of I, seems more "triumphal" insofar as it closes the sonata form. But to me, they both sound pretty "sure."
Our ears are accustomed to hearing an authentic cadence in V to close the exposition (theorists call it "essential expositional closure") and an authentic cadence in I to close the sonata movement. Sonata form is rather teleological: we know these moments (at least in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) are coming. Moreover, the cadential 6/4 is a major signpost. There isn't anything "searching" about a 6/4; they're a V chord that's about to happen. If I plunk down a 6/4 on the piano, you could no doubt hum the resolutions of 6-5 and 4-3 because you know the dominant is coming. (I once got into an argument here about whether we can "hear" things that haven't yet happened in the music: of course we can; the Classical era, in fact, operates on expectations.)
Tony's interpretation works well in terms of the melodic register and also the rhythm. During the first cadential spot, the orchestra begins by playing quarters on beats 1 and 3, then eighths (and you get the nice moment during which the clarinet plays triplets, tugging against the eighths), and finally sixteenths. There's a notated accelerando, then, moving into the cadence in V.
Although the second cadential moment is harmonically similar, the rhythmic figuration is different. It begins with eighths on 2 and 4, then steady eighths (no triplets in the clarinet this time), and ends with sixteenths. This time, the accel is less pronounced, and the clarinet doesn't rhythmically play against the orchestra.
So the cadence in I, for me, has less musical tension than the one at the end of the exposition, which makes sense given that by the end of the recapitulation, the second theme group has already appeared in the key of I and the demands of the sonata form have been met. (And the tension continues falling away when, a few bars later, the orchestra tonicizes the subdominant.)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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