The Poetic Pre-History of Sentence Form

matt baileyshea

Sentence form has drawn a great deal of scholarly attention since the appearance of William
Caplin’s Classical Form in 1998. Few publications, however, have considered the origins of the form
and many seem to assume that it emerged from instrumental repertoire in the late Baroque period.

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This article reveals important connections between sentences and poetic texts in early popular song,
especially in seventeenth-century British ballads, short-meter hymns, and German folk tunes.

Keywords: sentence, ballad, poetry, limerick, song.

W
hat would a list of famous sentences look like?
The opening sixteen-measure theme of
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony would certainly de-
serve a prominent place, as would the first theme of Mozart’s
Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. Many other Classical and
Romantic themes would make the cut—the idee fixe of
Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, the “gaze” theme of Tristan
und Isolde—but the list would have to include a great many
popular songs as well: “Happy Birthday,” “If You’re Happy
and You Know It,” “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain,”
and so forth. Compiling this catalogue would be daunting if
for no other reason than that it would be extremely long.
Counting sentences in music is like counting for hyperbole in
political speeches: the occurrences are too frequent to imagine
an exhaustive list.
This makes it all the more astonishing that it took so long
for sentences to draw widespread recognition. Schoenberg be-
gan teaching the concept to his students in the 1920s, but—
amazingly—it was only after the publication of William
Caplin’s Classical Form in 1998 that it became a genuine theo-
retical mainstay. There were, of course, earlier publications
dealing with sentences—Dahlhaus’s 1978 essay “Satz und
Periode” immediately comes to mind—but none of them had
far-reaching influence, particularly in North American theory
programs. After Caplin, things rapidly changed. What was
once a marginalized concept quickly became essential: we now
recognize the pervasiveness of sentences in thousands of eigh-
teenth- and nineteenth-century instrumental works; we require
our students to identify them in freshmen theory courses, and
we marvel at their extraordinary pliability—the way they can
emerge anywhere in a piece, from thematic zones to transitions
to closing sections.
But where did sentences come from? The literature on the
form is not scarce. Articles and conference presentations
on sentences have been pouring forth regularly for over a
I would like to thank Seth Monahan, Matthew Ardnt, Kim Kowalke, and
Andrew Cashner for their thoughts and advice while working on an initial
draft. I would also like to thank my anonymous readers for several excel-
lent suggestions.
decade.1 Most of this research, however, focuses on problems
of taxonomy and definition. Since sentences frequently occur
in “loosely knit” contexts, questions regarding boundaries and
norms have held center stage. Do presentation phrases typi-
cally prolong a tonic? What exactly happens in a continuation?
Must the sentence conclude with a cadence? How much can
the form be expanded or compressed and still be considered a
sentence (or, at the very least, “sentential”)?
In the published literature, there are at least twenty different
“types” of sentences. I included four general types in an early
article on the form, but I also established three types specific
to Wagner in my dissertation (e.g., “sentences of agitation and
collapse”). David Forrest and Matthew Santa have five new
types, which include “imitative sentences” and “sentences with
delayed fragmentation.” Meanwhile, Mark Richards estab-
lishes three types defined by the number of times a basic idea
is presented: monofold, bifold, and trifold sentences. And this
is to say nothing of Caplin’s “hybrids” or more specialized
manifestations, such as the “manic” sentences that Stephen
Rodgers describes in Schubert or the “sentential lyric-types” in
Michael Callahan’s work.2
This research is valuable. It captures the slipperiness and
complexity of the form, the way it manifests differently in dif-
ferent styles and contexts. But it also obscures how simple sen-
tences can be. Most of the phrases that we describe as
“sentential” have a few basic attributes in common: they usu-
ally articulate a “short: short: long” proportion, and they typi-
cally involve (1) a basic idea, (2) an exact or varied repetition,
and (3) a longer, directed motion toward the cadence.
Needless to say, we can quibble with any one of these points.
What do we mean, for instance, by “short”? How “varied” can
a repetition be and still be a repetition? What exactly does
1 Some examples include BaileyShea (2003, 2004), Broman (2007), Martin
(2010), Vande Moortele (2011), Richards (2011, 2016), Callahan (2013),
Rodgers (2014), Forrest and Santa (2014), and Krebs (2015).
2 See, respectively, BaileyShea (2004, 2003), Forrest and Santa (2014),
Richards (2011), Caplin (1998), Rodgers (2014), and Callahan (2013).
Bivens (2018, 89–153) expertly summarizes all of this research and adds a
new type, the “manifold” sentence, which includes multiple pairs of basic
ideas.

126
 the poetic pre-history of sentence form
“directed” mean? Unequivocal answers to these questions can
be reassuring—they can offer guidance in the face of vast and
complex repertoires (they also help us better teach the form)—
but a rigid adherence to strict taxonomical thinking can erect
unnecessary boundaries between pieces. If phrase X is no lon-
ger in the same category as phrase Y, we might miss the op-
portunity to notice interesting similarities.
My concern in this article is different. I want to uncover
valuable historical and stylistic connections between senten-
tial gestures of different eras, especially in relation to poetic
texts. Doing so, however, requires a more flexible and less
taxonomic approach than we tend to find in prior research
on the form. Ultimately, I view the sentence as something
that emerged from a simple rhythmic impulse—the “short:
short: long” proportion—a feature that was common in po-
etry as well as music. Naturally, there is more to sentence
form than a three-part proportional relationship. But de-
spite the many different sentence types in the literature,
most authors agree on the commonality of a few essential
features while recognizing that there is an inherent loose-
ness, especially as the form evolved in multiple styles and
genres. Most of the tunes that I cite below will undoubtedly
be recognized as sentential from this intuitive, “common-
sense” perspective. But many of them display features that
might raise the eyebrows of strict Formenlehre enthusiasts.
Questions might arise: “Is that repetition really a repetition?
Doesn’t the suggestion of an internal cadence disqualify this
theme from being a sentence?” Such skepticism should not
be dismissed, but neither should it impede discovery. As we
will see, there are vital, trans-historical connections between
themes that span multiple centuries. And to study the sen-
tence’s early incarnations not only has intrinsic historical
value, it also offers a better way of understanding the role of
the form in more contemporary musical contexts. Most im-
portantly, it uncovers crucial connections between sentence
form and poetic texts, revealing an especially strong align-
ment between the two in early popular song.3
beyond the “bach-to-beethoven” story
Although there have been no significant studies of the senten-
ce’s history to date, two basic assumptions have emerged in the
published literature: (1) Bach and other Baroque composers
began channeling their contrapuntal energy into vaguely sen-
tential phrases in the early eighteenth century; and (2) as the
galant style took shape, these phrases became more tightly
knit, more motivically defined, and more distinctly melodic,
3 There is relatively scant published research on phrase structure in early
music, but Megan Kaes Long tackles the subject in her forthcoming book
Hearing Homophony: Tonal Expectation at the Turn of the Seventeenth
Century. Most of her examples feature “periodic” designs, but she dis-
cusses sentential patterns as well, and she writes extensively about formal/
metrical relationships between music and text. I am grateful to her for
sharing a draft of her fourth chapter.
127
ultimately leading to the famous sentence forms that we find
throughout the repertoire of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Schoenberg never explicitly makes this argument in print,
but his examples in Fundamentals of Musical Composition sug-
gest a broad historical narrative. He chooses sentences from
Beethoven to define the form, but then discusses examples
from other composers in chronological order: Bach, Haydn,
Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms.4 His students were more ex-
plicit in tracing the sentence back to Bach. In the early 1930s,
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Webern argued that “the period and the eight-bar sentence are
at their purest in Bach; in his predecessors we find only traces
of them.”5 Similarly, Erwin Ratz draws a direct connection be-
tween Bach and Beethoven in terms of sentential design (he
cites the opening of Bach’s two-part invention in C major as
“satzartig”).6 More recently, Karl Braunschweig makes the
case that the sentence is a trope of Wilhelm Fischer’s
“Fortspinnungstypus,” an earlier instrumental Baroque form
defined by the presentation of material (“Vordersatz”), a
sequential “Fortspinnung,” and a cadential “Epilog.”
Braunschweig uses examples drawn almost exclusively from
Bach and thus reinforces the idea that the sentence emerged
primarily within a late-Baroque instrumental tradition.7
There are, unquestionably, important connections between
Baroque “Fortspinnung” patterns and early Classical sentences.
But there is far more to the story than a simple Bach-to-
Beethoven transmission. I especially want to emphasize three
fundamental points: (1) sentential phrases were becoming pop-
ular before the eighteenth century, (2) they were often tied to
specific vocal/poetic patterns, and (3) they frequently appeared
in “low” styles, such as ballads, parish hymns, and country dan-
ces (genres that rarely draw the attention of music theorists).
The remainder of this article will briefly survey this repertoire
and consider how it might have influenced later developments.
I focus primarily on British popular music from the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries but will also briefly consider some of
the folk music of the German tradition.
the poulter’s measure and the proto-limerick
Although the sentence flourished as a musical form in late
eighteenth-century Vienna, we can already see a similar design
gaining popularity in the poetic rhythms of sixteenth-century
England. Many of the most influential poets of the time—
including Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–47), Sir
Thomas Wyatt (1503–42), and Robert Southwell (1561–95)—
wrote in what was commonly referred to as “poulter’s measure.”
This meter was so popular that Queen Elizabeth I adopted the
4 Schoenberg (1967, 68–81).
5 Webern (1963, 27).
6 Ratz (1968, 40).
7 Braunschweig (2015). Forrest and Santa (2014) also cite a number of
Baroque sentences. Many of their examples come from Bach and nearly
all come from instrumental repertoire (in addition to Bach, they cite
examples from Handel, Telemann, and Vivaldi).
 128 music theory spectrum 41 (2019)
form in “The Doubt of Future Foes,” a famous poem written
sometime close to 1570.8 Here are its opening couplets:
The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten
mine annoy.
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb
Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom
weaved the web.
As shown in Example 1(a), poems in poulter’s measure
consist of twelve-syllable lines (“Alexandrine” verses) alternat-
ing with fourteen-syllable lines (“fourteeners”). The term
“poulter” refers to sellers of poultry: there are thirteen accented
syllables in a couplet, which is like giving an extra egg beyond
the usual twelve. Typically, the poulter’s measure involves iam-
bic feet, which are parsed into distinct groups: the six iambic
feet of the first line—the Alexandrine—are divided as 3 þ 3;
the seven iambic feet of the “fourteener” are divided as
2 þ 2 þ 3.9 In Queen Elizabeth’s poem, the 3 þ 3 grouping of
the first line is subtle, marked only by a shift from subject to
predicate (“The doubt of future foes k exiles my present joy”).
The 3 þ 3 grouping of the third line is articulated more
strongly with a comma. The rest of the poem involves similar
caesuras in the middle of every odd-numbered line. As shown
in Example 1(b), if we pause not only for each caesura, but
also at the end of each line, we read the poem musically, with
each couplet fitting a sixteen-beat, 4 þ 4 þ 8 pattern (a pattern
that would include three “virtual beats”).10 The “fourteener”—
the eight-beat line—is then further subdivided as 2 þ 2 þ 4.
Notice how the second line of the poem accentuates the 2 þ 2
grouping with alliterative “ws” and tongue-twisting sibilants:
“wit me warns” and “shun such snares.” These features rapidly
propel us to the final rhyme with an extended sequence of
monosyllabic words, creating an acceleration and fragmenta-
tion not unlike what we find in the continuations of instru-
mental sentences from the Classical period.
What this suggests is that poulter’s measure has the basic
structure and shape of what we now recognize as “sentences
with sentential continuations”—sentences where the
continuation itself is organized with a “short: short: long”
8 This poem is not without political and historical intrigue. As Jennifer
Summit writes, “under its thin veneer of figurative language, it advances
what amounts to a death threat to Mary Queen of Scots” (1996, 402).
9 The word “exiles” in the first line would be pronounced with an accent on
the first syllable in modern English (“exiles”), but the pervasiveness of the
iambic pattern encourages us to read it with an accent on the second sylla-
ble (“exiles”).
10 I use Derek Attridge’s (1995) labeling system in Example 1(b) with the
letter “X” indicating a virtual beat. Reading such poetry musically assumes
isochronous beats underlying the rhythms and accents of the text. As one
of my anonymous readers indicated, there is an extensive history of such
approaches that dates back at least as far as the eighteenth century (sum-
marized in Schneider [2004]). Needless to say, we do not usually read
English poetry with such metric regularity, but—as will be discussed
below—poulter’s measure has long been recognized as having a song-like
quality, not unlike nursery rhymes.
proportion.11 When musicians set any variant of these sixteen-
beat patterns to music—which happens throughout the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries—the phrasing is likely to
share distinct similarities with Classical sentence models.
The fact that this happened—that such poetic meters were
set to music—was crucial for their survival. By the end of the
Elizabethan era, poulter’s measure was no longer taken seri-
ously among the literary cognoscenti. Much of this had to do
with its specifically musical character, what John Thompson
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refers to as its “fatal sing-song.”12 The rhythm was so thor-
oughly linked with popular tunes that it quickly lost stature
among prestigious poets. As Eric Nebeker points out, “a form
such as poulter’s measure might inspire song much more often
than another form—say the sonnet—and thus it begins to fall
out of use as a literary form while surviving in popular
tunes.”13 Compare, for instance, the “thumping monotony” of
a couplet by Barnaby Googe (1540–94) with the unpredictable
accents in the pentameter lines of John Donne:14
Googe: Once musing as I sat, and candle burning by,
When all were hushed, I might discern a simple
silly fly,
Donne: Batter my heart, three person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.
The differences are obvious, and centuries of poetic criti-
cism have favored the latter over the former. But the flaws of
the sixteen-beat “sing-song” rhythm were only deemed a
weakness for poetry. When used for popular lyrics, the meter
was a massive success.
One of the ways poets could emphasize the “sing-song” charac-
ter of poulter’s measure was to introduce an internal rhyme at the
outset of the “fourteener,” thereby accentuating the 2 þ 2 group-
ing. This simple alteration immediately transforms the meter into
something akin to a modern limerick. The term “limerick” was not
coined until the late nineteenth century—it became popular in its
current form in the mid-nineteenth-century verse of Edward
Lear—but early variants of the poulter’s measure have clear similar-
ities with the limerick as we now know it. Indeed, all one has to do
to transform a regular poulter’s measure into a conventional limer-
ick is to (1) parse the constituent units into five lines, (2) create an
aabba rhyme scheme, and (3) include triple subdivisions of the beat
in place of—or in addition to—duple subdivisions. The following
example from 1724 already anticipates these features even though
the rhyme scheme does not quite follow more modern usage
(accents are indicated with boldface; virtual beats with an “[X]”):
My mither’s ay glowran o’er me, [X]
Tho’ she did the same before me: [X]
11 The first theme of Beethoven’s Op. 2, No. 1 is the most commonly cited
representative; see BaileyShea (2004).
12 Thompson (1961, 33).
13 Nebeker (2009, 1004).
14 The phrase “thumping monotony” comes from Thompson (1961, 64). He
uses it to refer generally to the rigid metrical patterns of poets like Googe,
not to this particular poem.
 the poetic pre-history of sentence form 129

Alexandrine: The doubt of future foes || exiles my present joy,

Fourteener: And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy.

example 1(a). Queen Elizabeth I, “ The Doubt of Future Foes,” lines 1–2

“Basic Idea” “Repetition”

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The doubt of fu- ture foes X ex- iles my pre- sent joy X

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

“Continuation”

And wit me warns to shun such snares as threat- en mine an- noy. X
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

example 1(b). “ The Doubt of Future Foes” as a sixteen-beat “ sentence”

I canna get leave
To look to my love
Or else she’ll be like to devour me. [X]15
I briefly discussed the similarity between sentences and lim-
ericks in my dissertation, but did not trace this connection to
before the Viennese Classical period.16 Similarly, Michael
Callahan cites a variety of sentential “lyric-types” in the “Great
American Songbook”—many of which have limerick-like
features—but he does not discuss the poetic origins of the
style.17 As demonstrated below, old English tunes often in-
volve settings of poetry that might best be thought of as
hybrids of poulter’s measures and limericks. These appear in a
variety of contexts, but they are most strongly associated with
British broadside ballads. Since this repertoire is likely unfa-
miliar to music theorists, a brief overview is in order.
Starting around 1550, street vendors in London began sell-
ing single, inexpensive “broadsides”: sheets of paper that in-
cluded news of the day, simple woodcut illustrations, and
rhyming ballads that could be accommodated to the latest
popular tunes (Example 2). As Claude Simpson points out,
“the broadside, written usually by a hack versifier to a common
tune, was sold in bookstalls or fair booths or hawked about
15 This is “Katy’s Answer” from Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany, cited in
Legman (1991, xxxiii).
16 I used an example from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe in order to demon-
strate the easy alignment of sentences and limericks (2003, 127).
17 Callahan (2013, 1.2) selects “You Took Advantage of Me” by Rodgers
and Hart as his first example: “I’m a sentimental sap, that’s all / What’s
the use of trying not to fall / I have no will / You’ve made your kill /
’Cause you took advantage of me!”
cities and towns by street singers.”18 For musicologists, the
ballads pose significant challenges. Most broadsides did not
include music notation and many of the tunes that the ballads
allude to have long been forgotten. In some cases, the broad-
sides do not even name a specific tune: they simply indicate
that the words should be sung “To a New Northern Tune” or
“To a Pleasant New Play-House Tune.”19 Sarah Williams cap-
tures both the popularity and elusiveness of this practice:
“Singing, hearing, and seeing ballads was a shared daily experi-
ence for most English citizens, an experience that allowed for
the constant interaction and metamorphosis of ballad tunes,
texts, subject material, and implied social commentary. . . [the]
ballads straddled oral and literate culture, the material and the
ephemeral, and print and performance.”20
How, then, might we best determine what these street
musicians actually sang? Though we will never have definitive
answers, a significant number of sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century composers wrote and published variations on popular
tunes (e.g., William Byrd, Thomas Morley, and John
Dowland), and there are several crucial collections that pre-
serve the dances, airs, and ballads of their respective eras, in-
cluding The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (late 1500s), Playford’s
The Dancing Master (first edition, 1651), and Thomas
D’Urfey’s Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy (1698–
1720). Moreover, modern scholars now have access to digital
archives with ballads dating as far back as the sixteenth
18 Simpson (1966, ix).
19 Simpson (1966, xi).
20 Williams (2015, 1).
 130 music theory spectrum 41 (2019)
example 2. “ The Bad Husband’s Experience of Ill-husbandry,” from the Bodleian Libraries’ British Broadside Ballads Online, dated
between 1674 and 1679
century.21 And there are several indispensable books that col-
lect and transcribe most of the surviving tunes, especially
Simpson’s The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (1966)
and William Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden Time (orig-
inally published 1859).
This is all quite helpful, but it can still be fiendishly difficult
to match specific notes with any given text. Consider, for in-
stance, the case of a sixteenth-century ballad entitled “An
Excellent Song of an Outcast Lover.” This ballad appeared in
A Handefull of Pleasant Delites (1584) with an indication that
it should be sung to the tune of “All in a Garden Green.” The
entire ballad consists of rhyming couplets in poulter’s measure,
beginning with the lines:
My fancie did I fixe, [X] in faithful forme and frame: [X]
In hope ther shuld no blust’ring blast have pow’r to move
the same. [X]
As John Ward points out, Byrd published variations on a
tune called “All in a Garden Grine” in 1591 (though the mu-
sic would have been written earlier).22 As shown in Example
3(a), the theme is a fairly straightforward sentence with a
short basic idea, repetition, and continuation leading to ca-
dence. Ward understandably assumes, therefore, that the
tune would have been sung as in Example 3(b) with the
poulter’s rhythm of the text closely matching the sentential
21 See, for instance, Broadside Ballads Online from the Bodleian Libraries
(http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/) and the English Broadside Ballad
Archive at University of California Santa Barbara (https://ebba.english.
ucsb.edu/; last accessed November 20, 2018.).
22 Ward (1967, 28).
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tune.23 This very well may be correct, but the cadence in
Ward’s example doesn’t make much sense without accompa-
nying harmonies: a solo vocal melody would end more con-
vincingly in A minor (with G] and A as the final notes). To
complicate matters further, a different, much longer tune
emerged in the seventeenth century with the same title: “All
in a Garden Green.” Example 4 reproduces Simpson’s
transcription (derived from William Ballet’s Lute Book, a
late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century manuscript).24
Interestingly, this tune also has sentence-like features: the
first part of the theme resembles one of Caplin’s hybrids,
with a basic idea, contrasting idea, and continuation.25 The
second part is more sentence-like: m. 12 suggests a half-
cadence, but the material in mm. 11–12 might be taken as a
varied repetition of the initial basic idea (both ending with
the same lower-neighbor pattern). Nevertheless, as both
Ward and Simpson acknowledge, there is no easy and intui-
tive way to match the words of “An Excellent Song of an
Outcast Lover” to this alternate tune.
Thankfully, not all ballad texts pose such problems. A tune
known as “The Merry, Merry Milkmaids,” for instance, pro-
vides an especially strong link between sentential music and
limerick-like ballads.26 Unlike “All in a Garden Green,” there
is a great deal of consensus on the basic profile of the tune.
23 Example 3(b) is reproduced from Ward’s Example 1 (1967, 29).
24 Simpson (1966, 10).
25 Caplin (1998, 63).
26 This tune goes by many other names, including “The Merry Milkmaids
in Green” and “The Milkemaid’s Dumps.” See Chappell (1965, 295).
 the poetic pre-history of sentence form 131

example 3(a). William Byrd, “ All in a Garden Grine,” from My Ladye Nevell’s Booke of Virginal Music (1591)

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example 3(b). John Ward’s hypothetical version of “ An Excellent Song of an Outcast Lover” (adapting Byrd’s melody)

example 4. “ All in a Garden Green,” transcribed by Claude Simpson from William Ballet’s Lute Book (ca. 1600)

“The Merry Milkmaids” was popular: it appeared in every
edition of The Dancing Master between 1651 and 1728. And
the text/music interaction is remarkably straightforward.
Chappell’s transcription, which I reproduce in Example 5,
has the characteristic “quick rhyme” of the limerick at the
outset of the continuation (“love” and “move”). And all other
ballads associated with this tune seem to share the same
poulter’s measure/limerick design. Thomas D’Urfey’s “Song
in Praise of the Bonny Milkmaid,” for example, includes the
following lines:
When cold bleak winds do roar, [X]
And flow’rs can spring no more, [X]
The fields that were seen,
So pleasant and green,
By winter all candy’d o’er. [X]
This, then, is a clear, unassailable case where a sentential
text and sentential theme are aligned in early music. But
how often does this happen? I have found a number of simi-
lar cases while scanning various collections of sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century ballads, but it would be wrong to sug-
gest that such examples are especially prevalent in the
British ballad repertoire. Although I have not done a sys-
tematic corpus study, my research thus far suggests that sen-
tences (or sentential themes) are relatively rare, perhaps
fewer than ten percent. Most of the ballads involve texts in
simple balanced couplets, frequently set with periodic
designs.27 Nevertheless, sentential gestures regularly emerge
in both words and music, often in strange and slippery ways.
And they often have fascinating similarities and differences with
later galant-style phrasing. Most of the differences are obvious
(they tend to be less motivically defined, with different har-
monic implications and voice-leading schemas). But three spe-
cific attributes are worth addressing here:
1. PRE-CADENTIAL CAESURAS
Both Example 6(a) and 6(b) come from John Gay’s The Beggar’s
Opera (1728). This is an especially good resource. The opera
started a veritable craze in early eighteenth-century England
and was quickly followed by several other “ballad operas,” each
featuring witty combinations of popular tunes and brash spoken
dialogue. There are no recitatives in these operas, only collec-
tions of “airs” based on tunes that sometimes originated more
than a hundred years earlier. Johann Christoph Pepusch ar-
ranged these tunes for the initial performance, but the scores
for the first and second editions did not survive. His unfigured
27 In her forthcoming book, Megan Kaes Long analyzed 1,030 phrases from
the German, English, and Italian homophonic partsong repertoire. She
found that over 60 percent of the phrases were “two-part” (period-like),
with a much smaller percentage for “three-part” (sentential) phrases: 18
percent of the German, 7 percent of the English, and 8 percent of the
Italian. My intuition is that the percentages in the British ballads would
be similar to Long’s.
 132 music theory spectrum 41 (2019)
basses from the third edition did survive, but since my main
concern is with the thematic design of the tunes—not
Pepusch’s arrangement—I’ve reproduced the melodies alone in
Example 6(a) and 6(b).
Both of these phrases involve limerick-like texts matched
with sentential themes. In both cases, the continuation begins
with rhythmic acceleration, but they also imply a dominant ar-
rival in the middle of their respective sixth measures, just be-
fore the final cadential portion of the phrase. I do not hear
either of these moments as legitimate half cadences—the me-
lodic continuity overrides any strong cadential implications—
but they do pause for a breath, as it were, before arriving at a
final concluding gesture.28 In Example 6(b), this is especially
clear. Macheath’s tune corresponds to what I have previously
called AABA sentences, a type commonly found in vocal mu-
sic.29 Such phrases are somewhat periodic in their sense of bal-
ance (2 þ 2 þ 2 þ 2) but their second halves nevertheless create
a sense of directionality and continuity that persists despite
what we might think of as a “pre-cadential caesura”: in this
case, the attenuated half-cadence in m. 6. “Happy Birthday” is
the most famous contemporary example of the AABA design.
The continuation of “Happy Birthday” does not pause on the
dominant, but the traditional rest just before the cadential
unit—“happy birthday, dear so-and-so (pause)”—delays the
eventual resolution. This creates a touch of drama, but it does
not efface the overall directionality of the phrase.30
A similar pause happens before the cadence in the anony-
mous sixteenth-century tune “Go from my Window,” set by
Thomas Morley in Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book.31 The
text follows the general sixteen-beat pattern of the poulter’s
28 In Example 6(a), mm. 3–4 are clearly a varied repetition of the basic idea,
but the pause on ^2 at the end of m. 4 suggests a half-cadence, which raises
the possibility of a sentence/period hybrid. Also, Pepusch’s notation calls
for each half of the phrase to be repeated—a surprising feature when com-
pared with the design of Classical sentences. There is no reason to assume
that these repeats were common in the practice of singing this tune prior
to the eighteenth century. As Jeremy Barlow (1990, xiv) points out, some
of the repeat signs in The Beggar’s Opera seem to be superfluous; others
may have been inserted for reasons having to do with the timing of various
stage gestures.
29 BaileyShea (2004, 16).
30 The AABA sentence has obvious similarities to Walter Everett’s concept
of SRDC patterns in popular song (statement, repetition, departure, con-
clusion). Everett’s idea is flexible—it can happen at multiple levels and
can involve internal cadences—but several scholars have noted important
resemblances to the sentence. See Everett (2009) and Summach (2011).
Note also that AABA sentences might be compared with common
AABA patterns in the thirty-two-measure groupings of Tin Pan Alley
songs. The difference of scale, however, is significant: AABA sentences
derive from a history of thematic development at the level of the phrase.
The thirty-two-measure patterns in Tin Pan Alley songs, on the other
hand, typically involve groupings of several different complete phrases into
larger forms—a different historical and stylistic evolution.
31 This tune became the basis for several instrumental variations by promi-
nent composers, including John Dowland. It appears in Morley’s First
Booke of Consort Lessons (1599). For more, see Chappell (1965, 140).
measure/limerick hybrid, but it includes several salient varia-
tions in place of the typical iambic feet:
Go from my window, love, go
go from my window, my dear
The wind and the rain
will drive you back again,
you cannot be lodged here.
Morley’s arrangement, shown in Example 7, includes some
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rather florid instrumental writing—popular accompaniments
were no doubt much simpler—but the AABA sentential de-
sign is straightforward nonetheless. The rapid rhyme of “rain”
and “again,” along with the quickening harmonic rhythm and
rising stepwise bass, creates a directed continuation. But, like
the tunes from The Beggar’s Opera above, there is a dominant
arrival just before the basic idea returns at the conclusion. This
creates another subtle “pre-cadential caesura” that slows the
momentum of the phrase but also heightens the tension: we
know the music is driving toward the final cadence (and the
concluding rhyme) but it pulls back for a fleeting moment just
before the inevitable resolution.32
2. PHRASE EXTENSIONS
When a sentential theme is paired with a sentential text, there
are multiple features that drive the words and music toward
the cadence. In a limerick, we strongly anticipate the final
rhyme, especially because of the third and fourth lines, which
have a dual function: (1) the short “quick rhymes” provide a
sense of acceleration; and (2) they displace the rhyming word
of the first line, which makes the return of the original rhyme
at the end of the fifth line that much more satisfying:
When cold bleak winds do roar,
And flow’rs can spring no more,
The fields that were seen,
So pleasant and green,
By Winter all candy’d o’er.
In this particular limerick, the third and fourth lines shift
into triple subdivisions, which makes the acceleration that
much more palpable. The ways that musical sentences acceler-
ate toward their cadences are well known: in addition to the
normal goal-directed harmony and voice leading of Western
tonal phrasing, we also tend to find features such as motivic
fragmentation, increased rhythmic activity, and/or accelerated
chord changes. When a sentential text is matched with a sen-
tential tune, the drive within the continuation is considerably
amplified.
In the Classical period, composers frequently extend the
continuation phrases of sentences—withholding the
cadence—in order to exaggerate the tension and drama. But
32 Duffin (2004) suggests that Shakespeare might have had this tune in
mind when Ophelia sings, “And will he not come again, / and will he not
come again? / No, no, he is dead, go to thy death-bed, / He never will
come again” (Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5).
 the poetic pre-history of sentence form 133

example 5. Chappell’s transcription of “ The Merry Milkmaids,” with text from a ballad called “ Keep a Good Tongue in Your Head” (1653)

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example 6(a). John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, Act 1, Scene 8, air 9

example 6(b). John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, Act 2, Scene 5, air 7

similar extensions also occur in early British ballads. Purcell’s
“Bess of Bedlam” (1683), one of the many “mad songs” of the
seventeenth century, strings together two sentential phrases
based on limerick-like rhymes (Example 8).33 The first phrase
is much more loosely knit than the second: the recitative at the
outset obscures any clear sense of statement and repetition,
and the “continuation” shifts into triple meter to follow the tri-
ple subdivisions of the poem (the continuation is itself senten-
tial). My main interest is with the second phrase, which begins
with a straightforward presentation: a basic idea is stated and
then repeated down a third. The continuation, however,
extends beyond normal proportions with an obvious instance
of word painting (the melisma at “warble”). Note that our per-
ception of the phrase extension is undoubtedly much more sa-
lient with the limerick-based text than it would be with an
33 Purcell wrote only a melody and figured bass; this realization was done by
Sergius Kagen.
instrumental version of the tune. The words create patterns
and expectations all on their own, and we are aware of the
phrase extension the moment that “warble” extends beyond a
simple two-note articulation.
This example—where a phrase extension is motivated by
text painting—suggests that the eight-measure sentence
may already be construed as “normative,” something that
might be compressed or extended for expressive effect (the
melisma stretches the phrase from eight measures to ten).
Needless to say, this is highly anachronistic from a
Formenlehre perspective. Even late eighteenth-century theo-
rists like Riepel and Koch had no specific theoretical termi-
nology for eight-measure sentences, and it was not classified
as a distinct theoretical construct prior to Schoenberg. But
the basic three-part gesture—the short: short: long
proportion—was already emerging somewhat regularly, es-
pecially in conjunction with poetry that shows clear traces
of poulter’s measure and early limerick design. It is not
134 music theory spectrum 41 (2019)

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example 7. Thomas Morley, “ Go From My Window” (1599)

example 8. Henry Purcell, “ Bess of Bedlam,” (1683), mm. 38–57, arranged by Sergius Kagen

hard to imagine, then, that composers such as Purcell might
have had an inherent understanding of the sentence as a
common “theme type”—a template with which listeners
would be sufficiently familiar that they could recognize any
salient deviations from expected patterns.
Indeed, one of the most famous ballad tunes of the seven-
teenth century was “Mall Peatly” (though it often went by
other names and spellings). This was a popular dance tune
that appears in a number of sources, including The Dancing
Master. It appears in D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy as a
song called “Gillian of Croydon” and was used in several early
eighteenth-century ballad operas. Chappell transcribes the
tune as reproduced in Example 9(a).34 This is a sixteen-mea-
sure phrase that might be thought of as a compound sentence
34 Chappell (1965, Vol. 1, 290).
 the poetic pre-history of sentence form
(4 þ 4 þ 8) where the continuation is itself a 2 þ 2 þ 4 sen-
tence. The latter phrase—grouped as 2 þ 2 þ 4—is aligned
with one of D’Urfey’s variants of poulter’s measure.
A wife called Joan of the Mill [X] And a maid they call’d
brown Nell [X]
Take off your glass, said Gillian of Croydon, a health to our
Master Will. [X]
Chappell’s version is well balanced, but the dance versions
typically extend the final cadence by repeating the material in
m. 14 several times before moving on to the cadence (see
Example 9[b] for the extended cadence as it appears in the
1675 edition of The Dancing Master). D’Urfey’s text in Pills to
Purge Melancholy clearly acknowledges that tradition by insert-
ing a long string of “superfluous” text (Example 9[c]). Even
Chappell’s sixteen-measure version seems to get “stuck” at m.
14 when the possibility of an accelerated harmonic rhythm
gets shut down by two measures of dominant harmony. The
dance versions get stuck for far longer and, when matched
with words, the songs have a comic appeal not unlike what we
find in so-called cumulative songs (such as “The Twelve Days
of Christmas”) in which verses or choruses gradually take on
more and more repetitive freight. The pleasure of singing such
songs is similar to building a house of cards—the joy is seeing
how far you can extend it before it collapses.
3. SMALLER SENTENTIAL GESTURES
As demonstrated in several examples above, themes that are
aligned with limerick-like texts often feature “sentential con-
tinuations,” where the second half of the text motivates an em-
bedded “short: short: long” pattern (e.g., “Poor Bess for his
sake / A garland will make / My music shall be a groan.”).
Occasionally, lines such as these are isolated and used as small
sentential gestures within larger forms. This occurs, for in-
stance, in the middle of “Packington’s Pound,” which—like
“Mall Peatly”—was one of the most popular tunes of
seventeenth-century England.
Example 10(a) reproduces Simpson’s transcription from
William Barley’s A New Booke of Tabliture (1596).35 This early
example begins with a clearly articulated sentence. But as the
tune was adapted to various texts throughout the seventeenth
century, it morphed into something quite different. Example
10(b) shows a much later version from The Beggar’s Opera.
Notice that period forms are now used for both the beginning
and ending of the binary form, but the beginning of the sec-
ond part—the sentential gesture that “stands on the
dominant”—is more or less the same. As with most ballads as-
sociated with this tune, this short middle phrase has a senten-
tial text: “But if by mishap / They fail of a Chap, / To keep in
their Hands, they each other entrap.”
Small sentential gestures such as these appear in a variety of
places and are often combined into larger, balanced rhymes.
35 In Barley’s version, the tune is called “Bockington’s Pound.” See Simpson
(1966, 565).
135
When that happens, the melodies are typically designed as
periods where the antecedent and consequent phrases are
themselves sentential. Consider Macheath’s tune from Act 1,
Scene 13 of The Beggar’s Opera (Example 11[a]). The text is
easily parsed into a sentential antecedent and consequent:
ANTECEDENT: My heart was so free,
It rov’d like the bee,
’Till Polly my Passion requited;
CONSEQUENT: I sipt each Flower,
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I changed ev’ry Hour,
But here ev’ry Flower is United.
Pepusch’s version of the melody includes a two-measure ex-
tension of the consequent phrase, repeating the lines “I sipt
each Flower / I changed ev’ry Hour.” But it nevertheless has
much in common with many similar phrases from the
Classical period. Mozart’s theme from the first movement of
the Piano Sonata in A Major, K. 331, is probably the most ob-
vious comparison. Indeed, with just a few adjustments to the
cadences, we can fit Mozart’s tune to Macheath’s words quite
comfortably (Example 11[b]). But many other galant themes
would correspond just as well, and similar examples are found
throughout the ballad operas.36
short-meter hymns
As should be clear, many of these sentential ballads of old
England were associated with vulgar and bawdy topics. Roger
Fiske, for instance, describes D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge
Melancholy as “a vast anthology . . . much used when ladies
were not present.”37 The “low” path to the modern limerick,
in other words, was already in place as early as the seventeenth
century. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the same poetic meters
and rhythms were also used for a very different purpose—
namely, sacred music.38
By the middle of the sixteenth century, with the
Reformation sweeping across Europe, congregational singing
entered a state of flux. The psalms were translated into
English meters and sung to popular tunes. As Nicholas
Temperley points out: “One of the strongest weapons in the
hands of the reformers was popular song. Religious polemics,
theological reasoning, and attacks on superstition could make
little appeal to the ordinary people, but they could and did re-
spond warmly to the opportunity to take part in the music of
worship.”39
36 Many would reasonably argue that these sentential gestures are too small
and too indistinct to qualify as sentences in and of themselves. My con-
cern in this article is to consider how we might profitably understand such
gestures within a larger stylistic development. Particularly noteworthy in
the ballad tradition is that units that appear as the continuation of a sen-
tence can be excised and used independently within other forms.
37 Fiske (1986, 3).
38 Sentential texts also appear to have been used in nursery rhymes. Tommy
Thumb’s Pretty Songbook from 1744 includes the famous proto-limerick
“Hickory Dickory Dock.”
39 Temperley (1979, 19).
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example 9(a). Chappell’s transcription “ Mall Peatly,” with D’Urfey’s “ Gillian of Croydon,” from Wit or Mirth: Pills to Purge
Melancholy (1719)

example 9(b). Extended cadence at the end of “ Mall Peatly,” from The Dancing Master (1675)

text into lines of 2 þ 2. But an alternate meter was also used

example 9(c). The first verse of “ Gillian of Croydon” in
D’Urfey’s Wit or Mirth: Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719)
The conventional meter for English psalms, as found in the
Sternhold Hopkins Psalter of 1549, involves iambic lines alter-
nating between eight and six syllables. This is known as
“common meter” and it features obvious virtual beats after the
six-syllable lines:
The man is blest that hath not bent
To wicked rede his ear, [X]
Nor led his life as sinners do,
Nor sat in scorner’s chair. [X]40
Musical settings of these psalms typically feature balanced,
periodic phrases, which match the clear binary division of the
with some regularity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries. It features the same pattern as common meter, but with
one crucial difference: the initial line has only six syllables in-
stead of eight. This was known as “short meter” because of the
clipped opening line—a 6.6.8.6 pattern in place of the com-
mon 8.6.8.6. The following is an example from The Whole
Book of Psalmes Collected into Englishe Metre (1584):
Remember not the faultes [X]
And frayltie of my youth [X]:
Remember not how ignoraunt
I have bene of thy truth [X].
This is the same metrical scheme as poulter’s measure. And
the fact that such hymns would emerge contemporaneously
with secular ballads like “An Excellent Song of an Outcast
Lover” is not coincidental. As Temperley explains, the leaders
of the Reformation needed to harness the power of popular
song if they wanted to spur any significant change: “By provid-
ing texts that fitted the popular tunes, they could immediately
create a new body of hymns, to be sung at sight by those who
could read the printed hymn sheets, and to be easily commit-
ted to memory by the illiterate. Inevitably, therefore, the
earliest protestant hymns are in the form of popular songs—
metrical, rhyming, strophic, and in one of a small number of
simple metres, chiefly made up of four-foot and three-foot
lines.”41

40 This is a revised version of Sternhold’s psalm by William Whittingham

(1561). See Temperley (1979, Vol. 2, 41). 41 Temperley (1979, 19).
 the poetic pre-history of sentence form 137

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example 10(a). Simpson’s transcription of “ Packington’s Pound,” from William Barley’s A New Booke of Tabliture (1596)

example 10(b). “ Packington’s Pound,” as it appears in Act 3, Scene 2 of The Beggar’s Opera (1728)

example 11(a). John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, Act 1, Scene 13, air 15

example 11(b). Mozart, K. 331, first movement, adapted to text from The Beggar’s Opera
 138 music theory spectrum 41 (2019)
Temperley goes on to explain that reformers—including
Martin Luther—were not bothered if the original songs used
racy language: “Any good tune was acceptable, even if its origi-
nal words were irreligious or bawdy: indeed an important sec-
ondary motive . . . was to provide a substitute for lascivious
folk songs which were felt to be an evil influence.”42
Temperley cites “Damon and Pythias” as an example, one
of the oldest notated popular songs of sixteenth-century
England (the tune appeared as a broadside ballad around
1564). The text is a standard poulter’s measure, and begins as
follows:
Awake ye woeful wight, that long hath wept in woe:
Resign to me your plaint and tears my hapless hap to show.
As Temperley explains, this tune was re-fitted for short-meter
Elizabethan hymns, using the same melody but altering the
words from the secular to the sacred: “I woeful wretched wight
/ With cruel tears distraught / In thee do put my whole delight
/ That made all things of naught.”
The broadside version is given in Example 12(a). The tune
is clearly “sentential,” but the repetition is only rhythmic—a
distinctive rhythm, to be sure, but not a “textbook” repeat for a
sentence. This might be interpreted as text painting: the com-
mand to “awake” is presented with directed linear motion, but
the more somber phrase, “long hath wept in woe,” flatlines on
a single, plaintive scale degree.43 The melody arrives on the
dominant pitch at “tears,” just before the final cadential ges-
ture. This suggests the possibility of a “pre-cadential caesura,”
which becomes explicit in a lute version that appeared around
1600 (reproduced as Example 12[b] from Temperley’s tran-
scription).44 This lute version follows the same sentential pat-
tern of the broadside ballad—though with enough contrast in
mm. 4–7 to be considered, perhaps, a “hybrid” form—but it
features a dramatic and somewhat awkward gap before the
final cadential unit (just before “My hapless hap to show”).
This is significant because early short-meter hymns often
transform these pre-cadential caesuras into clear-cut cadences,
strong enough to obfuscate all but the most fleeting character-
istics of late eighteenth-century sentence form. See, for exam-
ple, Daman’s short-meter tune “Southwell” from 1579,
reproduced as Example 13(a) with Erik Routley’s transcrip-
tion.45 The perfect authentic cadence on C temporarily cuts
off the directed linear motion to the final tonic, but only tem-
porarily. The subsequent music completes the melodic descent,
thereby closing out the larger phrase.
42 Ibid.
43 The opening also relates to later Classical sentences by suggesting a “tonic
form” in mm. 1–2 and a “dominant form” in mm. 3–4.
44 Temperley (1979, 41).
45 Routley (1981, 98). This tune was designed to fit any short-meter text. I
have arbitrarily selected the passage excerpted above from The Whole Booke
of Psalmes (“Remember not the faultes . . .”). Note that the opening half-
note of the tune—which coincides with a “weak” syllable—is a “gathering
tone” that is extended in length in order to allow the congregation to find
the correct pitch.
These mid-continuation caesuras were a common feature of
early sentential psalms, but things would eventually change. By
the nineteenth century, Daman’s tune was being arranged as
in Example 13(b), an eight-measure sentence with an unbro-
ken flow in the continuation (arranged by Allen William
Chatfield, 1876). The path from Damon to Chatfield, how-
ever, is far from clear and cannot simply be explained as a reac-
tion to late eighteenth-century instrumental themes. Although
straightforward sentential phrases appear to be scarce in early
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English psalms, it is entirely possible that the actual practice of
singing might have deviated considerably from written nota-
tion. Temperley, for instance, quotes Edmund Howes from
1615, who writes: “In the first and second year of his [Edward
VI’s] reign, the mass was wholly suppressed, and part of King
David’s psalms were turned into English verse, by Hopkins
and Sternhold, grooms to the king’s chamber, and set them
to several tunes, consisting of galliards and measures.”46 As
Temperley points out, “exactly what Howes meant by ‘meas-
ures’ it is hard to say, but ‘galliards’ were dances, and dances
imply instruments and clear rhythms, neither of which can be
found in the printed psalm books.”47
An obvious “chicken-or-the-egg” question might arise at
this point. Were sentential poetic texts the catalyst for senten-
ces in instrumental music? Or did these “sing-song” texts arise
as imitations of instrumental phrases? My governing assump-
tion is that poetry and music were too inextricably linked in
Medieval and Renaissance Europe to definitively answer this
question one way or the other. As Simpson points out, “it is
often a moot point whether a given air represents a ballad tune
adapted to dance purposes or vice versa; evidently both pro-
cesses operated.”48 Vocal music and instrumental music indis-
putably affected one another. Tunes like “Packington’s Pound”
developed differently over time as it changed from an instru-
mental context to a vocal context. But sentential gestures seem
to have emerged in poetry and music at roughly the same time,
likely rooted in a similar rhythmic impulse. Example 14, for
instance, is a phrase from Erasmus Widmann’s Musikalischer
Tugendspiegel (1613). My text overlay—using Queen
Elizabeth’s couplet from “The Doubt of Future Foes”—shows
how easily this phrase aligns with the rhythms of poulter’s
measure (and short-meter hymns for that matter). This does
not mean, of course, that Widmann had a similar text in
mind. It simply shows that instrumental phrases that display
the same general rhythm and grouping structure of a familiar
poetic pattern were beginning to appear. And, as shown in
Example 15—a more provocative alignment of Queen
Elizabeth and Beethoven—this sixteen-beat pattern would
come to have profound importance in the Classical period.
46 Temperley (1979, 36).
47 Ibid.
48 Simpson (1966, xiii).
 the poetic pre-history of sentence form 139

example 12(a). Anonymous, “ Damon and Pythias,” Broadside Ballad (ca. 1564)

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example 12(b). Anonymous, “ Damon and Pythias,” lute version (ca. 1600)

example 13(a). Daman, “ Southwell” (1579), Routley transcription

example 13(b). Daman, “ Southwell,” arranged by Chatfield (1876)

 140 music theory spectrum 41 (2019)
example 14. Erasmus Widmann, Musikalischer Tugendspiegel (1613), “ Sofia,” with Queen Elizabeth I text overlay
example 15. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, opening theme with Queen Elizabeth I text overlay
sentential texts in the german tradition
One might object to Example 15 on the grounds that it fuses a
poetic meter from sixteenth-century England with an instru-
mental theme from early nineteenth-century Vienna. In what
sense might the former have had any impact on the latter?
British ballads were popular in Europe—Fiske refers to The
Beggar’s Opera as “the greatest theatrical success of the
century”—but it is hard to draw any direct line between those
early vocal sentences and the galant-style sentences of the
Classical period.49
Nevertheless, as Simpson points out, even before the ballad
operas, English tunes “found their way across the Channel and
took root, especially in the low countries,” and he cites several
early seventeenth-century Dutch songbooks that include
English tunes.50 More importantly, there is no reason to as-
sume that England would have been “ground zero” for the de-
velopment of the sentence at all. More likely, sentential
patterns simply started to emerge as a variation of periodic
designs all across the continent. Indeed, we can identify sen-
tential texts in other languages as well, including German, and
they were already impacting phrase design long before
Beethoven set to work on his famous sentential themes.51
49 Fiske (1986, 94).
50 Simpson (1966, xiii).
51 Harald Krebs (2015, 250, n. 16) explains that “there is an affinity between
the sentence and the [German] folk song,” but he does not discuss senten-
ces and sentential texts that pre-date the Classical period.
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Examples 16(a)–(c) are all drawn from Ludwig Erk and
Franz Böhme’s three-volume collection, Deutscher Liederhort.52
They each engage the Barform tradition, but they vary in that
(1) Example 16(a) is a sentential sub-phrase within the
Abgesang of a larger Barform;53 (2) Example 16(b) is a senten-
tial melody that comprises the entire Abgesang; and (3)
Example 16(c) is a sentential melody that is coextensive with
the entire Barform.54 The last two examples, Examples 16(b)
and 16(c), do not feature traditional poulter’s or limerick-like
meters. The third lines of each text are longer than the others,
but only by a few syllables (the syllabic pattern is 6 þ 6 þ 8 in
Example 16[b] and 8 þ 8 þ 11 in Example 16[c]). Stretching
these third lines of text into a convincing continuation requires
deceleration in the rhythm. In Example 16(b), this results in a
traditionally proportional sentence, with measure groupings of
2 þ 2 þ 4. But Example 16(c) only extends the continuation
for two-thirds of its expected length (a tightly knit Classical
sentence would group the measures as 4 þ 4 þ 8).
Nevertheless, the directed linear motion from the melodic
highpoint (F) to the final cadence articulates a fairly conven-
tional sentential tune, despite the lack of accelerated motion.
52 Böhme and Erk (1963, Vol. 3, 195, Vol. 2, 714 and 305).
53 Arguably, the repetition of the Stollen could be taken as the presentation
of a larger sentence form, but the presence of two different phrases in the
Abgesang complicates that reading.
54 Rothstein (1989) and BaileyShea (2002–2003) discuss the relationship be-
tween sentences and Barform. Despite obvious similarities, they are not
the same thing. Barforms are more loosely defined and often encompass
multiple phrases, as in Example 16(b) above.
 the poetic pre-history of sentence form 141

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example 16(a). “ Kriegsfreud und Kriegsleid” (1622), No. 1310 of the Erk/Böhme collection

example 16(b). “ Der Sch€afer von Neustadt” (1490), No. 933 of the Erk/Böhme collection

example 16(c). “ Stete Liebe” (1640), No. 485 of the Erk/Böhme collection

These examples are not unique, but neither are they partic-
ularly common. Much like sentences in the British ballad tra-
dition, sentences in early German folk song appear to be quite
rare—certainly less prominent than the ubiquitous periodic
phrases. There is also no clear evidence that poulter’s measure
or limericks had any strong analogues in German poetic prac-
tice. There is, however, at least one case where a “limerick-
like” German poem played an important role in Western mu-
sic history. Mahler’s Fourth Symphony culminates with a set-
ting of “Das himmlische Leben,” one of the “alte deutsche
Lieder” from Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano’s Des
Knaben Wunderhorn, published between 1805 and 1808. “Das
himmlische Leben” predates the nineteenth century, but the
exact origin is difficult to ascertain. It was published in
Friedrich Nicolai’s Almanach in 1778, but some scholars have
traced it back to 1764, and there are strong indications that it
developed out of an earlier Bavarian folk-song tradition.55
Whether it was an eighteenth-century pastiche or a genuine
representative of German folk poetry is not entirely clear, but
55 See the discussion of the song in Roman (1970).
what is clear is that the text features a striking limerick-like de-
sign, which relates to similar patterns in poetry that stretch
back several centuries. Here, for instance, is a sample of its me-
ter and rhyme scheme:
Johannes das L€ammlein auslasset, [X]
Der Metzger Herodes drauf passet! [X]
Wir führen ein geduldig’s,
Unschuldig’s, geduldig’s,
Ein liebliches L€ammlein zu Tod! [X]
Sankt Lucas den Ochsen t€at schlachten [X]
Ohn’ einig’s Bedenken und Achten! [X]
Der Wein kost’ kein Heller
Im himmlischen Keller!
Die Englein, die backen das Brot! [X]56
56 Saint John drains the blood of the little lamb, / Herod, the butcher
looks out for it! / We lead a patient, / innocent, patient, / a lovable
lamb to its death! / Saint Luke slaughters the ox / without giving it
thought or mind!/ Wine costs not a penny / in heaven’s cellars! / The
angels, they bake the bread!. Translations by Renate Stark-Voit and
Thomas Hampson (2002).
 142 music theory spectrum 41 (2019)
BAROQUE PERIOD CLASSICAL PERIOD
Fortspinnungstypus Tightly-knit sentences
gives rise to early as a basic theme type;
“sentential” patterns Loosely-knit sentences
in some formal areas
example 17(a). The instrumental history of the sentence (as reflected in current research)
BAROQUE PERIOD CLASSICAL PERIOD
Sentences appear in Sentences appear in
ballads, nursery rhymes, folk songs, opera arias
and short-meter hymns
example 17(b). The vocal history of the sentence (as reflected in current research)
The limerick-like rhythm is obvious; the only real departure
from modern convention is that the standard five lines are here
grouped into units of ten (the rhyme scheme is aabbc / ddeec,
rather than simple groups of aabba stanzas).
One of the most charming features of the poem is that it si-
multaneously draws upon three different traditions of senten-
tial poetry: (1) it has obvious religious themes, which relates it
to the history of short-meter hymns; (2) it sometimes treats
the religious themes in a flippant, sacrilegious manner, which
relates it to the bawdy vulgarity of the poulter’s/limerick tradi-
tion;57 and (3) the child-like silliness of the language draws on
the custom of nursery rhymes (e.g., “Unschuldig’s,
geduldig’s”). Scholars have long viewed Mahler’s text as a
child’s view of heaven, but the degree to which the poem’s me-
ter and rhythm connect with earlier folk-song traditions has
gone largely unnoticed. This is not the place to launch an ex-
haustive analysis of Mahler’s phrase structure in relation to the
poem (in short, some passages follow the rhythms of the text
with obvious sentential designs; others, including the song’s
opening theme, resist the text so thoroughly that they obscure
the poetic rhythm altogether). What matters most to me is
that Mahler’s music falls within a much broader tradition of
similar text/music interaction.
These examples suggest a simple point: German popular
music featured sentential texts and melodies that are strikingly
57 The text involves frequent allusions to the life and death of various saints,
but it also focuses a great deal on the preparation of food. One passage
alludes to St. Lawrence, who, according to legend, was roasted on a grid-
iron. The poem reads: “Sanct Lorenz hat müssen / Sein Leben einbüßen /
Sanct Marta die Köchin muß seyn” (“St. Lawrence had to give his life, St.
Martha must be the cook”). The implication of cannibalism may have
been too much for Mahler, because he cut the reference to St. Lawrence
from the song, a decision that significantly impacts the phrase rhythm of
his setting.
ROMANTIC PERIOD TWENTIETH CENTURY
Loosely-knit sentences Sentences are less common
become more pervasive, but still appear in certain
more thematic “high art” pieces
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ROMANTIC PERIOD TWENTIETH CENTURY
Sentences commonly used Sentences appear in
in art songs, folk songs, musicals, tin pan alley songs,
and operas pop, hip hop, etc.
similar to the tunes of British popular ballads. And these pat-
terns are clearly related to similar thematic designs in a wide
range of later vocal repertoire: Classical arias, Schubert and
Schumann songs, and even the symphonies of Mahler.58 They
persist in American folk music (“If You’re Happy and You
Know It”), American musical theater (“Meet Me in St. Louis,
Louis”) Tin Pan Alley (“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”),
80s pop music, and the rhythms of hip hop.59
To some extent, this raises the possibility of two alternate
histories: the development of instrumental sentences from the
Baroque period onward—as shown in Example 17(a)—and the
development of vocal sentences, often based on sentential texts,
as shown in Example 17(b). But it would be foolish to imagine
that these two strands have nothing to do with one another.
There are, to be sure, some features that seem to be more vocal
in nature than instrumental and vice versa (pre-cadential cae-
suras and AABA sentence types seem to occur more often in
vocal sentences; complex motivic fragmentation occurs more
frequently in instrumental sentences). But there are also many
similarities. Undoubtedly, vocal and instrumental sentences
arose from a similar rhythmic impulse rooted in the short: short:
long proportion, and this rhythmic impulse was both musical
and poetic, a distinction that ultimately breaks down at the level
of meter; the poetry is already a kind of music.
58 See Martin (2010), Rodgers (2014), and Krebs (2015).
59 The Beastie Boys have an entire song based on limericks—the
“Negotiation Limerick File”—but the patterns are also used by many
other hip hop artists. See, for instance, J. Cole’s “Who Dat?” (2010),
which features the line: “So if you’re sellin’ crack / Or if you’re sellin’ rap /
make sure it’s mean so them fiends keep on comin’ back.” For a simple
80s pop example, see the song “Safety Dance” by Men without Hats.
 the poetic pre-history of sentence form
conclusion
In his article on sentences and the “Fortspinnungtypus,”
Karl Braunschweig astutely observes that Schoenberg
“formalized [the sentence] in order to demonstrate historical
continuity between his new music and the revered music of
the past.”60 This is quite true, and although there is nothing
intrinsically wrong with Schoenberg’s historical program, it
does invite a certain degree of skepticism. For Schoenberg,
the sentence is a “higher” form than the period because of
its inbuilt motivic development. His examples in
Fundamentals of Musical Composition trace a clear path from
the tightly knit models of Beethoven to the more diffuse
sentential forms of Brahms, where motivic development
sometimes begins immediately without clear repetition.61
The prescription for future composers, then, is obvious:
simply allow motivic development to flow forth without any
exact repetition, tonal constraints, or balanced, symmetrical
proportions. Viewed from this historical perspective, the
sentence was a useful incubator for motivic development in
the Classical period, but by the end of the Romantic era it
was obsolete. The motive no longer needed the sentence; it
could develop quite freely without it.
The history of the sentence, however, is much messier
than this. As we have seen, it includes everything from nurs-
ery rhymes to parish hymns to tawdry British ballads—a
cross-continental potpourri of tunes that awkwardly mingle
amid the august company of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.
The role of text/music interaction is especially important,
as can be seen in melodies from a wide range of styles and
genres. And this reinforces the fact that the instrumental
sentences of Beethoven should not be viewed as “idealized”
models of the form: rather, they represent stylized, “high art”
manifestations of a melodic gesture that had been in place
centuries before, used regularly in the music of street-level
musicians.
None of this should be especially surprising. The transition
from the Baroque period to the Classical period is defined pri-
marily by the turn away from complex counterpoint toward
simple, memorable melodies. That composers would draw
upon popular music and folk traditions is fairly obvious. By
the end of the eighteenth century, Haydn and Beethoven were
both publishing settings of Irish and Scottish ballads, but these
might best be understood not as isolated experiments in
“exoticism,” but as an acknowledgment of a certain stylistic
kinship.
Nevertheless, there are some important disclaimers that
need to be made. Sentences did occur with some regularity in
the British ballads and German folk music of the late sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. They also seem to have played an
important role in dance music and religious hymns of the era.
They were not, however, a pervasive feature of these
60 Braunschweig (2015, 157).
61 Schoenberg (1967, 68–81).
143
repertoires. Exact percentages would require a future corpus
study—and we are unlikely to ever know the extent to which
these types of phrases would have been used in non-notated
popular music—but anyone perusing the ballads and folk
songs of earlier eras will see that sentential melodies are rela-
tively rare, especially in comparison with more balanced, peri-
odic designs. What this means is that our general
understanding of the sentence as a Classical form—something
that emerged as a regular compositional option in the late
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eighteenth century—is entirely reasonable. What I hope to
have established is not that sentences were a dominant feature
of earlier music, but rather that they were beginning to
emerge with some frequency. And, more importantly, that
they were beginning to take shape within a vocal/poetic tradi-
tion that would maintain many of its core features through-
out later generations. Not all sentential texts were set with
sentential music and not all vocal sentences involve sentential
texts. But the association between poetry and music was es-
pecially strong in the sentences of the late-Renaissance/
Baroque tradition—a period of phrase development much de-
serving of closer study.
How, then, might these early examples of sentences change
our current view of the form? A poem by Morris Bishop
argues that:
The limerick is furtive and mean;
You must keep her in close quarantine,
Or she sneaks to the slums
And promptly becomes
Disorderly, drunk, and obscene.62
Theorists have already documented how “disorderly” the sentence
can be—recent theoretical struggles with taxonomy and definition
are a strong testament to that—but this article demonstrates that
we would also do well to recognize that sentences move quite
freely in and out of the quarantine of high-art music. And this
simply reinforces the protean nature of the form in general. The
historical manifestations of the sentence are complex, elusive, and
varied, and there is often real poetry in their design.
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Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 41, Issue 1, pp. 126–45, ISSN 0195-6167,
electronic ISSN 1533-8339. V C The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford

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DOI: 10.1093/mts/mty031