Cramer, Of Serpentina and Stenography: Audio Demonstration and Errata

This page is a supplement to my article "Of Serpentina and Stenography: Shapes of Handwriting in Romantic Melody" by Alfred W. Cramer, which appears in 19th-Century Music,vol. 30, no. 2 (Fall 2006), pp. 133-65. ISSN: 0148-2076.

The article is also accessible online from 19th-Century Music (University of California Press Journals). ISSN: 1533-8606

Abstract
Like nineteenth-century handwriting, Romantic melody consisted of a single unbroken, shaped curviline and was invested with the ability to evoke the ideal, maternal feminine, to evoke deeper images and specific meanings, and to function simultaneously as language and as signifier of infinite meaning. It can be fruitfully compared with stenography, a handwriting-based information technology flourishing in the middle nineteenth century. This article documents the perceived handwriting-like nature of music and the perceived musicality of stenography through writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, Robert Schumann, Wagner, and the stenographer F. X. Gabelsberger. The perceptual phenomenon of auditory streaming, along with analytical approaches developed by Robert O. Gjerdingen and Eugene Narmour, makes it possible to demonstrate structural similarities between stenography and melody (in examples by Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and Wagner) and to show commonalities between the notion of the "music of the future" and the futuristic aspirations of stenography. In turn, it becomes possible to perform the shapes of handwriting in Romantic melody and hear voices and fantastic visions in those shapes.

After you read the article, you may find the following useful:

A Demonstration

In case you're struggling to imagine what the Narmourean implication-realization analyses mean in terms of sound, here is a demonstration that encapsulates my discussion of the Wälsung-Love leitmotif (related to Example 8 in the article). The "performances" were synthesized using CSound. Perhaps you won't agree that the analyses precisely represent the parsing that you hear. But I hope you agree with my main point, which is that the placing of crescendo and diminuendo makes a difference to the parsing.

	Listen to the analytical reduction
	Listen to the performance

	Listen to the analytical reduction

	Listen to the performance

	Listen to the analytical reduction
	Listen to the performance

Errata

Plate 3 should have been printed with higher resolution, like this:

2.) Weisheit und Klugheit.

Willst du, Freund, die erhabensten Höhen der Weisheit erfliegen,
Wag’ es auf die Gefahr, dass dich die Klugheit verlacht.
Die kurzsichtige sieht nur das Ufer, das dir zurückflieht,
Jenes nicht, wo dereinst landet dein muthiger Flug.

Minor things that may throw you if you read closely:

p. 158, second column, near beginning of first full paragraph: In "Ring," the only feature tending toward closure on the F# downbeat of the second measure is its metric strength.... ("Ring" should not be italicized. As elsewhere, I'm referring to the "Ring" leitmotiv, not to the Ring cycle.)

p. 159, final paragraph: The notion that one would use dynamics to overcome the closural tendencies of tones is consistent with Wagner's performance practice.

Click here to print the errata.