Includes abstract and vita. --- Introduction -- Ending on a high note: upper register cadences in golden age musical theatre songs -- The ascending fundamental for and against the 5̂-6̂-7̂-8̂ fundamental line -- Auxiliary cadence tunes -- Conclusion.
Music and lyrics share a symbiotic relationship in Golden Age musical theater songs. Together, they lead to rhetorically important moments in the song form, such as the final cadence or the start of the sectional chorus in sectional verse-chorus songs. This dissertation explores some common voice-leading mechanisms through which the idiomatic high notes at the end of countless musical numbers and the off-tonic beginnings that initiate many simple chorus and sectional verse-chorus songs are achieved. Chapter 2 examines how the characteristic final cadences in the singer's upper tessitura model one or more of Heinrich Schenker's ([1935] 1979) traditional voice-leading transformations--initial ascent, octave coupling, ascending register transfer, reaching over, and cover tones--in songs that display a traditional descending line. When the five aforementioned techniques fall short in explaining a song's voice leading, Chapter 3 argues that a background ascending 5-6-7-8 (or 5-) line in either a 2- or 3-part fundamental structure may better account for a song's linear-contrapuntal design. Chapter 4 subsequently looks at the tonal design of songs that begin and end in two different keys and offers Schenker's concept of the auxiliary cadence for explaining the tonal organization these songs. Throughout these three internal chapters, analytical vignettes show how the voice-leading tools coordinate with the lyrics to create dynamic trajectories toward structural moments in the song; these include the simultaneous descent or ascent of the fundamental line, the titular refrain or lyrical reveal, and the arrival of the global tonic alongside the answer to the sectional verse's lyrical question at the beginning of the sectional chorus. Chapter 5 closes this dissertation with a summary and a few concluding thoughts.
