Rising melodic figures have a long history in cadences in European music of all genres. This essay documents and analyzes examples from an especially influential repertoire of social dance music, the Viennese waltz in the ...

The menuet entered into upper-class social dance, ballet, and opera no later than the 1660s, thanks largely to Jean Baptiste Lully. This essay charts formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets by Johann Sebastian ...

This is Part 4b of a multi-part essay gathering compositions with ascending lines and cadence gestures in European and European-influenced music. The repertoire here is polkas published in Europe or the United States between ...

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 ...