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Marianna von Martines's Dixit Dominus

point. The first choral entrance of movement 5 comes in Phrase Structure and
the form of a soprano-alto choral duet (Figure 5). While Galant Schemata
these two movements include brief passages of imita- In his book Music in the Galant Style, Robert Gjerdingen
tion (e.g., movement 1 mm. 68-77, movement 5 mm. 98- makes the case that “a hallmark of the galant style was a
101), they are overwhelmingly built from non-imitative, particular repertory of stock musical phrases employed
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quasi-homophonic textures. in conventional sequences.” He terms these archetypal
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In other movements, however, Martines juxtaposes phrases “schemata,” and devotes the rest of the book to
homophony or near-homophony with strict imitation documenting characteristic forms and usages of several
(including fugue) in a typically Baroque fashion. Move- of them. L. Poundie Burstein analyzes Martines’s use of
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ment 4 features a slow, largely homophonic introduc- galant schemata in her 1765 piano sonata in A major,
tion, followed by a fugue. Movement 6 begins with slow noting the “skillful handling of musical convention,”
homophony (“Gloria Patri,” mm. 2-11), before moving “deft employment of stock procedures,” and “proper
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to imitation (“Sicut erat,” mm. 12-18) and fi nally return- galant decorum” of the sonata’s fi rst movement. As
ing to homophony as the choir declaims the cadential we will see, Martines also uses several such schemata in
phrase together (“et nunc et semper,” mm. 19-22). The her Dixit Dominus, ranging from voice-leading patterns a
extended fugue of movement 7 follows immediately. few bars long to sequences of cadences throughout large
As with choral/orchestral texture, Martines tends to sections of movements. These schemata clearly indicate

use one choral textural approach per movement but a Martines’s fluency in, and conscious usage of, the musi-
variety of approaches between movements. Her juxta- cal vocabulary of the galant style.
position of strict homophony and imitation shows her Gjerdingen’s second chapter details the origins and
incorporation of Baroque principles, while her use of diverse manifestations of a schema called the Romanes-
quasi-homophony, including choral duets, represents a ca, eventually identifying a particularly galant version
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
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more modern style. As with other aspects of her compo- in which the bass progresses 1- 7- 6- 3- 4… The open-
sition, Martines creates an effective progression between ing orchestral phrase of Martines’s Dixit Dominus (move-

movements by moving deftly between these stylistic ap- ment 1, mm. 1-6), which presents material later set to
proaches. text “Dixit Dominus Domino meo” (mm. 26-31, 80-85),
begins with a clear presentation of this schema (Figure
6 on page 17). Godt emphasizes the stylistically coded

16 CHORAL JOURNAL April 2021 Volume 61 Number 9