This is a companion piece to an essay on Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are,” where an alternative ending with a rising melodic gesture is written into the published sheet music. The survey of Gershwin’s “Embraceable You” here was inspired by a similar figure in an early recorded performance by Sarah Vaughan.

Some cadences in European and European-influenced tonal music show a contradiction in direction between registral stasis and linear movement, the example being alternative endings written into a song by Jerome Kern. The topic is explored through analysis of 51 recorded performances.

In 2021, SMT-V, an online journal of the Society for Music Theory, published a video essay by Michael Buchler, Professor of Music in the College of Music, Florida State University. It’s titled “I Don’t Care if I Never Get Back: Optimism and Ascent in ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’.” In this essay I examine similar songs from the era: Charles K. Ha…[Read more]

Ninety analyses of the anomalous A-major waltz in Schubert’s collection Valses sentimentales, D. 779 (1825). Readings are based on published sources for methodology, are reproduced from publications of mine, are recompositions, or are presented as narratives.