While the investigation of relationships between structure and expression
is, arguably, the ultimate goal for music analysis in general, such an approach
is especially suggestive with regard to Schubert's music, which often contain
formal and harmonic anomalies that draw attention to their rhetorical character.
In this paper I explore the relationship between structure and expression
in Schubert's music through focusing on composer's uses of the descending
bass tetrachord 1-b7-b6-5, a figure
that has traditional semantic associations with lament.
The paper is in three sections. In the first section I compare the rhetorical
and syntactical roles played by the descending tetrachord in Baroque and
Classical conventions, and argue that the descending tetrachord typically
functions as a foreground rhetorical topos in the Classical style; Schubert's
"Nachtstück", D. 672 uses the descending tetrachord in just
this way, suggesting that the composer inherited much of his expressive
vocabulary from his immediate predecessors. In the second section of the
paper, I investigate the expressive implications of a "hidden"
descending tetrachord structure found in the deep middleground of "Die
Liebe hat gelogen", D. 751. By way of conclusion, I discuss briefly
the theoretical ramifications of my analytical approach, as well as speculate
on its applicability to music by other composers.