Further Means of Phrase Expansion

Abstract

This chapter addresses further means of phrase expansion, not recognized by eighteenth-century authors. They include “overridden caesuras,” “twisted caesuras,” “loops,” “stretches,” and “written-out rallentando.” Their discussion refers to the concept of schemata introduced by Robert O. Gjerdingen (2007). Although he finds the origins of contrapuntal-harmonic schemata in the Italian partimento tradition, Gjerdingen’s account of cadential schemata takes for its point of departure the concept of clausulae in German music theory. The types of clausulae distinguished by Gjerdingen are compared to those mentioned by eighteenth-century authors and related to different types of caesuras in the theory of melody, discussed in chapter 2.