1. David Beach, "Motive and Structure in Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 110, Part I: The First Movement," Integral 1 (1987): 1-29; Charles Burkhart, "Schenker's Motivic Parallelisms," Journal of Music Theory 22 (1978): 145-75; Allen Cadwallader and William Pastille, "Schenker's High-Level Motives," Journal of Music Theory 36 (1992): 119-48; Roger Kamien, "Aspects of Motivic Elaboration in the Opening Movement of Haydn's Piano Sonata in C# Minor," in Aspects of Schenkerian Theory, ed. David Beach (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 77-93; John Rothgeb, "Thematic Content: A Schenkerian View," in Aspects of Schenkerian Theory, ed. David Beach (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 39-60; Carl Schachter, "Motive and Text in Four Schubert Songs," in Aspects of Schenkerian Theory, ed. David Beach (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 61-76.

2. For instance, David Epstein's Beyond Orpheus: Studies in Musical Structure (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979), in general treats the Grundgestalt as a unifying interval pattern, while Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff (and I) understand it as the source of a "tonal problem" that gives rise to a process of elaboration and resolution. See the Carpenter and Neff articles cited in footnote 3.

3.Schoenberg mentions musical idea and its components briefly in essays such as "New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea," Style and Idea, trans. Leo Black, ed. Leonard Stein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 113-24, and in Fundamentals of Musical Composition, 2nd ed., ed. Gerald Strang and Leonard Stein (London: Faber and Faber, 1970). He treats the concept more substantively in his posthumously-published textbook The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique and Art of its Presentation, ed., trans., and with a commentary by Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), though even there he does not present a complete illustration of a musical idea manifested by an individual work. More exhaustive applications of Schoenberg's approach are provided by his student Patricia Carpenter and Carpenter's student Severine Neff in a series of articles, of which the following are representative: Carpenter, "Grundgestalt as Tonal Function," Music Theory Spectrum 5 (1983): 15-38; idem, "A Problem in Organic Form: Schoenberg's Tonal Body," Theory and Practice 13 (1988): 31-63; Neff, "Schoenberg and Goethe: Organicism and Analysis," in Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, ed. David Bernstein and Christopher Hatch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 409-33.

4. John Rothgeb, review of Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation by Walter Frisch, Music Theory Spectrum 9 (1987): 204-15; idem, "Thematic Content," 40-42; Charles Burkhart, "Schenker's Motivic Parallelisms," 146-47.

5. See footnote 2 for a full reference to Epstein's work.

6. Such an interpretation of Schoenberg's concept can be traced back to Josef Rufer's analysis of the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata Op. 10 no. 1 in Composition with Twelve Notes Related Only to One Another, trans. Humphrey Searle (New York: Macmillan, 1954), pp. 38-45. Rufer highlights the repetitions and variations of motives in the movement's initial phrase, showing how such techniques unify the movement (and mark Beethoven as a precursor to Schoenberg the twelve-tone composer), but gives no suggestion that a process involving problem, elaboration and resolution organizes the motivic variation.

7. Janet Schmalfeldt, "Towards a Reconciliation of Schenkerian Concepts with Traditional and Recent Theories of Form," Music Analysis 10/3 (1991): 233-87.

8. Example 1 also illustrates the initial occurrence of a third motive, beta, the descending fifth. Its later manifestations in the movement will be discussed at length in paragraph [15].

9. My reading of measures 1-9 is modeled (though not at every point) on Schenker's analysis in "Further Consideration of the Urlinie: I," trans. John Rothgeb, in The Masterwork in Music, vol. 1, ed. William Drabkin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 105-06. Schenker's graphs at levels d) and c) in this analysis not only clearly portray what I am calling motive delta as an ascending third harmonized in tenths and my alpha as a neighbor C5-B4-C5 that is then turned into a double neighbor through the addition of the diminution D5, but they also give alpha a smaller notehead size, marking it as an inner voice in this initial presentation. Schenker in the commentary writes about a "dispute" between alpha and delta, characterizing them as 'competitors' for status as principal line and asserting that delta deserves preeminence as initial ascent to the primary tone.

The characterization of the two motives in this Grundgestalt as opponents actually did not originate with Schenker. He may have been aware that Anton Schindler, Beethoven's contemporary and associate, described this same passage as a manifestation of the concept of Zwei Principe, which in Beethoven's thinking (according to Schindler) involved the opposition of 'strong' and 'gentle' musical characters. See Nancy Hager, "The First Movements of Mozart's Sonata, K. 457 and Beethoven's Opus 10, no. 1: a C Minor Connection?," The Music Review 47/2 (1986-87): 95-96.

Janet Schmalfeldt in the above-mentioned Music Analysis article (p. 256, first half of Example 8) also presents a graph of mm. 1-9, which differs only in one essential aspect from my reading: she does not interpret the D5 in m. 8 as part of a double neighbor figure, but as a chord tone harmonizing the middle member of the lower neighbor C-B-C. My reasons for highlighting the D5 as part of motive alpha will become obvious; but her reading has the advantage of more faithfully following Schenker.

10. The transition is not shown in Example 2 to save space in the graphical file; the reader will want to refer to the full score for mm. 32-56. Descending groups of three parallel 10ths can be heard at mm. 34-36 and mm. 38-40; while mm. 42-46 adds tenths before and after to extend the motive to five parallel tenths, and the dominant pedal following m. 48 repeats the descending form of delta twice at mm. 49-52 and 53-56, in soprano and tenor voices.

Schmalfeldt also provides a graph of the second theme in her Ex. 14 (pp. 272-73). The reader can compare her analysis with both of my Examples 2 and 3 (Ex. 3 will be discussed in the following paragraph). Again, the general perspective--second theme as a prolongation of ^5 over III, a focus on neighbor motion in mm. 56-71 and a middleground descent in mm. 90-94--seems to be the same. But we differ on some of the details, especially our readings of mm. 82-86. Schmalfeldt hears this passage as a prolongation of ^6 over IV (the Ab is introduced back in m. 80), enabling her to characterize it as part of a culminating development of the G-Ab-G motive that has been prominent throughout the second theme (seeher commentary on pp. 275-76). My reading takes the "more conventional" tack of hearing 82-86 as prolongation of the cadential 6/4 chord, which enables me to set Bb as a consonant starting and ending point for repeated statements of motive alpha.

11. Robert O. Gjerdingen, A Classic Turn of Phrase (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), especially chapters 4 and 5.

12. My interpretation of mm. 86-90 as two alpha motives hinges on reading the 6/4 chord in m. 88 as a passing chord within a prolongation of the same chord from m. 86 to m. 90. This sort of interpretation has precedents in the Schenkerian literature--for example, Schenker's own reading of mm. 21-28 of J.S. Bach's C Minor Prelude from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Schenker maintains that a cadential 6/4 in mm. 21-27 resolves to V 5/3 at m. 28. The prolongation of the 6/4 is accomplished mainly through a neighbor viio7/V. In turn, chromatically-altered chord skips from F# to Ab and back to F# within this viio7/V are filled in by passing Gs, creating passing 6/4s that are ultimately part of the prolongation of the same chord. See Figure 1 (p. 48) and the associated commentary (especially pp. 50-51) in Heinrich Schenker, "The Organic Nature of Fugue as Demonstrated in the C Minor Fugue from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I," trans. Hedi Siegel, in The Masterwork in Music, vol. 2, ed. William Drabkin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 31-54.

13. Epstein, Beyond Orpheus, pp. 127-29.

14. Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition, p. 9.

End of Footnotes