Aristotelian poetics bequeathed an enduring representation of the structure of any expressive, temporally bound utterance: it has a beginning, a middle, and an
ending. Th is formal model or paradigm has an immediate, intuitive appeal. In
poetry as well as in music, composers and listeners/readers regularly attend to the manipulation of or play with beginnings, middles, and endings. And throughout the history of thought about music, ideas relating to these functions exist. Mat- theson described the shape of a musical oratory in terms that recognize these functions,17 Koch developed a compositional theory of form featuring appendixes
and suffi xes,18 and Schenker located a “defi nitive close of a composition” in the
moment in which ˆ1 appears over I.19 More recently, Dahlhaus has put forward a
tripartite structure consisting of an initial phase, evolution, and epilogue.20 My
own earlier study of classic music postulated a beginning-middle-ending para- digm,21 while William Caplin’s infl uential theory of formal functions recast ideas
pertaining to beginnings, middles, and endings. Th us the formal unit or theme
type known as sentence consists of a presentation phrase in which a basic idea is stated and repeated (beginning), followed by a continuation phrase featuring frag- mentation, harmonic acceleration, liquidation, and sequential repetition (middle) and a cadential idea (ending). Similarly, the fundamental harmonic progressions that defi ne the classic style are said to belong to one of three categories: prolon- gational, cadential, and sequential. Sequential processes are most characteristic of continuation phases or middles, cadences mark endings (including endings of beginnings as well as endings of endings), while the stasis of prolongation may initiate the structure, prolong it at its middle, or close it.22
And yet, but for a handful of attempts, the beginning-middle-ending model has remained implicit in music-theoretical work; it has not come to occupy as central a place in current analytical thinking as it might. Th ere are two reasons for this. One is that the model seems so obvious and banal (Craig Ayrey’s word)23
that it is not immediately clear how the analyst can explore its ramifi cations in a rigorous fashion. But only if one understands beginnings, middles, and endings solely as temporal locations rather than as complex functions with conventional and logical attributes that operate at diff erent levels of structure would the model seem banal. A second, more signifi cant reason has to do with the unavoidable
17. Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister, trans. Ernest Harriss (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981; orig. 1739).
18. Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, vols. 2 and 3 (Leipzig: Böhme, 1787 and 1793).
19. Schenker, Free Composition, 129.
20. Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism, trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 64.
21. Agawu, Playing with Signs, 51–79.
22. William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Th eory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 3–5 and 24.
fact that, as a set of qualities, beginnings, middles, and endings are not located in a single musical dimension but cut across various dimensions. In other words, interpreting a moment as a beginning or an ending invariably involves a reading of a combination of rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic factors as they operate in specifi c contexts. In an institutional climate in which analysts tend to work within dimensions as specialists, theories that demand an interdimensional approach from the beginning seem to pose special challenges. Th ese diffi culties are, how- ever, not insurmountable, and it will be part of my purpose here to suggest ways in which attending to beginnings, middles, and endings can enrich our perception of Romantic music.
For many listeners, the impression of form is mediated by beginning, middle, and ending functions. Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto opens with a powerful begin- ning gesture that, according to Edward T. Cone, dwarfs the rest of what follows—a disproportionately elaborate opening gesture that sets the introduction off as “an overdeveloped frame that fails to integrate itself with the rest of the movement.”24
Some openings, by contrast, proceed as if they were in the middle of a process pre- viously begun; such openings presuppose a beginning even while replacing it with a middle. Charles Rosen cites the long dominant pedal that opens Schumann’s Fan- tasy in C Major for Piano, op. 17, as an example of a beginning in medias res.25 And
an ending like that of the fi nale of Beethoven’s Fift h, with its plentiful reiteration of the tonic chord, breeds excess; strategically, it employs a technique that might be fi gured as rhetorically infantile to ensure that no listener misses the fact of ending. Ending here is, however, not merely a necessary part of the structure; it becomes a subject for discussion as well—a meta-ending, if you like.26
As soon as we begin to cite individual works, many readers will, I believe, fi nd that they have a rich and complex set of associations with beginnings, middles, and endings. Indeed, some of the metaphors employed by critics underscore the importance of these functions. Lewis Rowell has surveyed a variety of beginning strategies in music and described them in terms of birth, emergence, origins, pri- mal cries, and growth.27 Endings, similarly, have elicited metaphors associated with
rest and fi nality, with loss and completion, with consummation and transfi gura- tion, with the cessation of motion and the end of life, and ultimately with death and dying. “No more,” we might say at the end of Tristan and Isolde.
How might we redefi ne the beginning-middle-ending model for internal analytic purposes? How might we formulate its technical processes to enable exploration of Romantic music? Every bound temporal process displays a begin- ning-middle-ending structure. Th e model works at two distinct levels. First is the pure material or acoustical level. Here, beginning is understood ontologically as that which inaugurates the set of constituent events, ending as that which demarcates
24. Cone, Musical Form and Musical Performance (New York: Norton, 1968) 22. 25. Rosen, Th e Classical Style, 452–453.
26. Donald Francis Tovey comments on the appropriateness of this ending in A Musician Talks, vol. 2: Musical Textures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), 64.
27. Lewis Rowell, “Th e Creation of Audible Time,” in Th e Study of Time, vol. 4, ed. J. T. Fraser, N. Lawrence, and D. Park (New York: Springer, 1981), 198–210.
CHAPTER 2 Criteria for Analysis I
53 the completion of the structure, and middle as the necessary link between begin- ning and ending. At this level, the analyst is concerned primarily with sound and succession, with the physical location of events.Th ere is a second, more qualitative level at which events (no longer mere
sounds) are understood as displaying tendencies associated with beginnings, mid- dles, and endings. Th ese functions are based in part on convention and in part on logic. A beginning in this understanding is an event (or set of events) that enacts the nor- mative function of beginning. It is not necessarily what one hears at the beginning (although it frequently is that) but what defi nes a structure qualitatively as a begin- ning. A middle is an event (or set of events) that prolongs the space between the end of the beginning and the beginning of the ending. It refuses the constructive profi les of initiation and peroration and embraces delay and deferral as core rhe- torical strategies. Finally, an ending is an event (or set of events) that performs the functions associated with closing off the structure. Typically, a cadence or cadential gesture serves this purpose. An ending is not necessarily the last thing we hear in a composition; it may occur well before the last thing we hear and be followed by rhetorical confi rmation. Th e task of an ending is to provide a decisive completion of structural processes associated with the beginning and middle.
Th e fi rst level of understanding, then, embodies the actual, material unfolding of the work and interprets the beginning-middle-ending model as a set of place marks; this is a locational or ordinal function. Th e second speaks to structural function within the unfolding. Distinguishing between location and function has important implications for analysis. In particular, it directs the listener to some of the creative ways in which composers play upon listeners’ expectations. For example, a locational opening, although chronologically prior, may display func- tions associated with a middle (as in off -tonic beginnings, or works that open with auxiliary cadences) or an ending (as in works that begin with cadences or with a ˆ3–ˆ2–ˆ1 or ˆ5–ˆ4–ˆ3–ˆ2–ˆ1 melodic progression). Location and function would thus be nonaligned, creating a dissonance between the dimensions. Similarly, in a loca- tional ending, the reiterative tendencies that index stability and closure may be replaced by an openness that refuses the drive to cadence, thus creating a sense of middle, perhaps an equivocal ending. Creative play of this kind is known in con- nection with classic music, whose trim procedures and fi rmly etched conventions have the great advantage of sharpening our perception of any creative departures that a composer might introduce. It is also frequently enacted by Romantic com- posers within their individual and peculiar idiolects.
Although all three locations are necessary in defi ning a structure, associated functions may or may not align with the locations. It is also possible—functionally speaking—to lose one element of the model by, for example, deploying a loca- tional ending without a sense of ending. It would seem, in fact, that beginnings and endings, because they in principle extend in time and thus function as potential colonizers of the space we call middle, are the more critical rhetorical elements of the model. In certain contexts, it is possible to redefi ne Aristotle’s model with no reference to middles: a beginning ends where the ending begins. It is possible also to show that, in their material expression, beginnings and endings frequently draw on similar strategies. Th e stability or well-formedness needed to create a point of
reference at the beginning of a musical journey shares the material forms—but not necessarily the rhetorical presentation—of a comparable stability that is needed to ground a dynamic and evolving structure at its end. It is also possible that endings, because they close off the structure, subtend an indispensable function. From this point of view, if we had to choose only one of the three functions, it would be end- ing. In any case, several of these functional permutations will have to be worked out in individual analyses.
It is not hard to imagine the kinds of technical processes that might be associ- ated with beginnings, middles, and endings. Techniques associated with each of a work’s dimensions—harmony, melody, rhythm, texture—could be defi ned norma- tively and then adapted to individual contexts. With regard to harmony, for exam- ple, we might say that a beginning expresses a prolonged I–V–(I) motion. (I have placed the closing I in parenthesis to suggest that it may or may not occur, or that, when it does, its hierarchic weight may be signifi cantly less than that of the initiat- ing I.) But since the beginning is a component within a larger, continuous struc- ture, the I–V–(I) progression is oft en nested in a larger I–V progression to confer prospect and potential, to ensure its ongoing quality. A middle in harmonic terms is the literal absence of the tonic. Th is oft en entails a prolongation of V. Since such prolonged dominants oft en point forward to a moment of resolution, the middle is better understood in terms of absence and promise: absence of the stable tonic and presence of a dependent dominant that indexes a subsequent tonic. An ending in harmonic terms is an expanded cadence, the complement of the beginning. If the larger gesture of beginning is represented as I–V, then the reciprocal ending gesture is V–I. Th e ending fulfi lls the harmonic obligation exposed in the beginning, but not under deterministic pressure. As with the beginning and ending of the begin- ning, or of the middle, the location of the beginning and ending functions of the ending may or may not be straightforward. In some genres, endings are signaled by a clearly marked thematic or tonal return or by a great deal of fanfare. In others, we sense the ending only in retrospect; no grand activity marks the moment of death.
Similar attributions can be given for other musical dimensions. In doing so, we should remember that, if composition is fi gured essentially as a mode of play, what we call norms and conventions are functional both in enactment and in violation. On the thematic front, for example, we might postulate the imperatives of clear state- ment or defi nition at the beginning, fragmentation in the middle, and a restoration of statement at the ending, together with epigonic gestures or eff ects of reminiscence. In terms of phrase, we might postulate a similar plot: clarity (in the establishment of premises) followed by less clarity (in the creative manipulation of those premises) yields, fi nally, to a simulated clarity at the end. In addition to such “structural” proce- dures, we will need to take into account individual composerly routines in the cho- reographing of beginnings and endings. Beethoven’s marked trajectories, Schubert’s way with extensive parentheses and deferred closure, Mendelssohn’s delicately bal- anced proportions, and the lyrical infl ection of moments announcing home-going in Brahms—these are attitudes that might be fruitfully explored under the aegis of a beginning-middle-ending scheme. We have space here for only one composer.
As an example of the kinds of insights that might emerge from regarding a Romantic work as a succession of beginnings, middles, and endings on diff erent
CHAPTER 2 Criteria for Analysis I
55 levels, I turn to Mendelssohn’s Song without Words in D major, op. 85, no. 4 (repro- duced in its entirety as example 2.1). Th e choice of Mendelssohn is not accidental, for one of the widely admired features of his music is its lucidity. In the collectionAndante sostenuto. p 4 sf 7 sf f sf 10 p cresc. 13 cresc. 16 f piùf 19 p
Example 2.1. Mendelssohn, Song without Words in D major, op. 85, no. 4.
of songs without words, each individual “song” typically has one central idea that is delivered with a precise, superbly modulated, and well-etched profi le. Th e com- positional idea is oft en aff ectingly delivered. And one reason for the composer’s uncanny success in this area is an unparalleled understanding of the potentials of beginning, middle, and ending in miniatures. I suggest that the reader play through this song at the piano before reading the following analytical comments.
We might as well begin with the ending. Suppose we locate a sense of home- going beginning in the second half of bar 26. Why there? Because the rising minor seventh in the melody is the fi rst intervallic event of such magnitude in the com- position; it represents a marked, superlative moment. If we follow the course of the melody leading up to that moment, we hear a physical rise in contour (starting on F-sharp in 24) combined with an expansion of intervals as we approach the high G in bar 26. Specifi cally, starting from the last three eighth-notes in bar 25, we hear, in succession, a rising fourth (A–D), a rising sixth (G–E), and fi nally a rising seventh
22 sf cresc. 25 cresc. f dim. 28 p cresc. f dim. 31 p 34 Example 2.1. continued
CHAPTER 2 Criteria for Analysis I
57 (A–G). Th en, too, this moment is roughly two-thirds of the way through the song, is underlined by an implicative 6/5 harmony that seeks resolution, and represents the culmination of a crescendo that has been building in the preceding 2 bars. Th e moment may be fi gured by analogy to an exclamation, an expected exclamation perhaps. It also marks a turning point, the most decisive turning point in the form. Its superlative quality is not known only in retrospect. From the beginning, Men- delssohn, here as in other songs without words, craft s a listener-friendly message in the form of a series of complementary gestures. Melody leads (that is, functions as a Hauptstimme); harmony supports, underlines, and enhances the progress of the melody; and the phrase structure regulates the temporal process while remain- ing faithful in alignment. Th e accumulation of these dimensional behaviors pre- pares bar 26. Although full confi rmation of the signifi cance of this moment will come only in retrospect, the balance between the prospective and retrospective, here as elsewhere in Mendelssohn, is striking. Luminous, direct, natural, and per- haps unproblematic (as we might say today), op. 85, no. 4 exemplifi es carefully controlled temporal profi ling.Ultimately, the sense of ending that we are constructing cannot be understood with respect to a single moment, for that moment is itself a product of a number of preparatory processes. Consider bar 20 as the beginning of the ending. Why bar 20? Because the beautiful opening melody from bar 2 returns at this point aft er some extraneous, intervening material (bars 12–19). For a work of these modest dimensions, such a large-scale return readily suggests a reciprocal sense of closure within a tripartite formal gesture.
If we continue to move back in the piece, we can interpret the passage begin- ning in bar 12 as contrast to, as well as intensifi cation of, the preceding 11 bars. Note the quasi-sequential process that begins with the upbeat to bar 12. Phrase-wise, the music proceeds at fi rst in 2-bar units (114–133, 134–153; these and subsequent des-
ignations of phrase boundaries in this paragraph all include an eighth-note prefi x), then continues in 1-bar units in the manner of a stretto (154–163 and 164–173), and
fi nally concludes with 2 relatively neutral bars—“neutral” in the sense of declining a clear and repeated phrase articulation—of transition back to the opening theme (174–193).28 Th e moment of thematic return on the downbeat of bar 20 is supported
not by tonic harmony as in bar 2 but by the previously tonicized mediant, thus conferring a more fl uid quality on the moment and slightly disguising the sense of return. Th e entire passage of bars 12–19 features rhetorically heightened activity that ceases with the thematic return in bar 20. If, in contrast to the earlier hearing, the passage from bar 20 to the end is heard as initiating a closing section at the larg- est level of the form, then bars 12–19 may be heard as a functional middle.
Finally, we can interpret the opening 11 bars as establishing the song’s prem- ises, including its material and procedures. A 1-bar introduction is followed by a 4-bar phrase (bars 2–5). Th en, as if repeating (bar 6), the phrase is modifi ed (bar 7) and led through B minor to a new tonal destination, F-sharp minor (bars 8–93).
28. Bars 174–182 begin in the manner of the previous 1-bar units but modify their end in order to lead
In what would normally be a confi rmatory gesture (bars 94–113), F-sharp minor is
replaced by the more conventional dominant, A major. Th is is a deliberate shift ing of gears, as if to say, “Th is is really where we want to be.”
If we now return to our initial proposition to hear bar 263 as the beginning of
the end, we must still reckon with the fact that this moment is still some way from the ending. How does Mendelssohn sustain the compositional dynamic between bars 26 and 37? By creating a web of events, all of them promoting the larger