[Smt-talk] Subdominant

[Frank Samarotto]

Nicolas,

Thank you for an informative‹and delightfully continental---posting.

³Mall² makes me think of ³Promenade², and that makes me think of ³Carnaval²
(Schumann¹s, that is).

The opening Préambule steps right into a wonderfully sonorous subdominant,
so emphatic that I hear resound through the next four bars, prolonging IV
(through subsidiary functional progressions) up to the chromatic voice
exchange in m. 5 leading to the dominant. (The first 24 bars are nice little
essay in different uses of the subdominant, especially if one take the Fb
chords of the middle as representing subdominant function.) A glorious way
to step out (to a carnival, not to a mall) and to prolong a subdominant for
most of a phrase.

Thus I hear it‹or perhaps it is a crude error in judgment!

Best,
Frank

Frank Samarotto
Associate Professor of Music Theory
Jacobs School of Music
Indiana University Bloomington




On 5/16/12 11:04 AM, "Nicolas Meeùs" <nicolas.meeus at paris-sorbonne.fr>
wrote:

>  I can reassure you: I never called a supermarket "un Mall", and I never met a
> music theorist (nor anybody, for that matter) doing so around here. We use "un
> supermarché" (or at times, especially in Belgium, "un shopping centre", an
> obvious Anglicism). Some say "un shouk", but the meaning is not exactly the
> same ­ note that department stores at times are called "Bazar" or "Bazaar".
> Schenker may have said "ein Kaufhaus", or  "ein Geschäft", or possibly "ayn
> geve'lb", but the meaning is not exactly the same either.
>  
>  Note that the word "Mall" is English in origin and has been used as early as
> 1644, in John Evelyn's diary, in the meaning of "a public walk", from the name
> of the game, "pall-mall", Fr. "paillemaille", from It. "pallamaglio". I think
> to know that Canadian French still has "un mail" to describe a large avenue
> with trees. The usage of "Mall" to denote a commercial gallery does not seem
> to predate the second half of the 20th century (perhaps beginning with the
> Bergen Mall, New Jersey, in 1957). As they say, "when you've seen a shop,
> you've seen a mall".
>  
>  In any case, I don't feel that the purity of the concept is threatened in
> Europe: be reassured.
>  
>  Nicolas Meeùs
>  Université Paris-Sorbonne

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