Topics and Schemata

Abstract

In my Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory I asked, ‘What are musical topics?’. In answer, I posited that topics are conventions, yet they do not subsume all kinds of conventions: ‘Other conventions, subsumed under this concept by other authors, are not topics’. Among them are contrapuntal-harmonic schemata. If schemata are not topics, they can, nevertheless, combine with topics ‘into more or less stable amalgam[s] that are conventional in their own rights’ (‘Introduction’, in The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, ed. Danuta Mirka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 2). This idea was developed by Vasili Byros in the same volume with reference to the schema–topic amalgam made up of the le–sol–fi–sol and the ombra (‘Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven’, in The Oxford Handbook, 381–414) and by William Caplin in the following chapter, dedicated to the lament topic (‘Topics and Formal Functions: The Case of the Lament’, in The Oxford Handbook, 415–452). In the wake of the volume’s publication, the expressive qualities of schemata and their interaction with topics have been explored by other authors. In two articles, one of them published in this journal, John A. Rice presented two schemata that he called the Heartz and the Morte, and proposed that the Heartz is ‘not only . . . a schema but also . . . a topic’, in that it conveys ‘a sweetness and tenderness characteristic of a certain strain of the galant style’ (‘The Heartz: A Galant Schema from Corelli to Mozart’, Music Theory Spectrum 36/2 (2014), 318, 315). By contrast, the Morte is an emblem of lament and thus akin to ombra (‘The Morte: A Galant Voice-Leading Schema as Emblem of Lament and Compositional Building-Block’, Eighteenth-Century Music 12/2 (2015), 164). Olga Sánchez-Kisielewska established a link between the ‘sacred hymn’ topic and the Romanesca schema, yielding what she calls a sacred Romanesca (‘Interactions between Topics and Schemata: The Case of the Sacred Romanesca’, Theory and Practice 41/1 (2016), 47–80, and ‘The Romanesca as a Spiritual Sign in the Operas of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven’, in Singing in Signs: New Semiotic Explorations of Opera, ed. Gregory J. Decker and Matthew R. Shaftel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 163–191). Nathaniel Mitchell came up with the Volta, a schema which has no strong topical implications, yet frequently performs a dramatic function as a gesture of culmination (‘The Volta: A Galant Gesture of Culmination’, Music Theory Spectrum 42/2 (2020), 280–304). And, again in this journal, Ewald Demeyere touched upon the affective implementations of a schema consisting of a dominant pedal accompanied by a chromatic descent (DPCD) (‘Yet Another Galant Schema: The Dominant Pedal Accompanied by a Chromatic Descent’, Eighteenth-Century Music 19/2 (2022), 173–199). Two of these authors framed the relation between schemata and topics in terms of that between syntax and semantics. Although independent in principle, ‘syntax and semantics interface in what cognitive linguists call a syntax–lexicon continuum’ and lead to the emergence of form–meaning pairs: ‘The musical equivalents of form–meaning pairs are schema–topic amalgams’ (Byros, ‘Topics and Harmonic Schemata’, 382, 383). Accordingly, the sacred Romanesca is a ‘fluid amalgam between musical syntax and semantics’ (Sánchez-Kisielewska, ‘Interactions between Topics and Schemata’, 65). This raises the question of the conditions under which such amalgams are possible.