This essay charts formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets written during the second half of the eighteenth century. The repertoire includes menuets by Johann Stamitz, Johann Gottfried Müthel, Franz Joseph Haydn, ...

This essay considers some theoretical questions raised at the end of Part 4 in this series. William Caplin’s theory of formal functions in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven stipulates that themes are of two primary types (period, ...

This final essay in the Mozart series charts formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets written by other composers during the last ten years of Mozart’s life, 1780-1791, and by three composers active in Vienna ...

In European music, freer treatment of the sixth and seventh scale degrees in the major key encouraged the use of independent V9 chords, which appear already early in the nineteenth century, are common by the mid-1830s, and ...

This essay continues the documentation of formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets from the eighteenth century, as begun in parts 1-4 of this series. In this essay, the focus is on menuets written by other composers ...

Die Fledermaus (1874), today the best-known operetta by Johann Strauss, jr., is also a treasure trove of ascending cadence gestures. This article documents and interprets those multiple instances and their effects.

This essay charts formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets by Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782) and compares them with menuets by Mozart. Bach is notable for exploiting the “galant theme,” presumably because of its ...