A version of this essay was presented at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Austin, Texas, in 1989 I am grateful to my friend and colleague Prof William Caplin for many long and helpful discussions about issues related to analysis of form function A McGill University Social Sciences and Humanities Research Grant provided assistance in the preparation of this articleGoogle Scholar

1 Lippman, Friedrich, ‘Verdi e Bellini’, Atti del 1° congresso internazionale di studi Verdiani 1966 (Parma, 1969), 184–96Google Scholar

2 Budden, Julian, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols (London and New York, 1973–81)Google Scholar

3 Kerman, Joseph, ‘Lyric Form and Flexibility in “Simon Boccanegra”’, Studi Verdiani, 1 (1982), 47–62, Scott Balthazar, ‘Rossini and the Development of the Mid-Century Lyric Form’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 41 (1988), 102–25Google Scholar

4 A perfect authentic cadence is understood here to mean one where a root-position dominant is succeeded by a root-position tonic and the first scale degree is sounded in the top voice of the tonic In this definition of coda I differ from Scott Balthazar who in ‘Rossini and the Development of Mid-Century Lyric Form’ (p 108) understands material after an imperfect authentic cadence (one where the third degree is the highest sounding scale degree in the tonic) in bar 24 of Arsace's Oh' come da quel dì (Rossini, Semiramide, Act 1) as a coda My own view is that the coda in this example occurs with the perfect authentic cadence at the downbeat of bar 28 and that because the basic structure is 20 bars long, this music does not ‘conform to mid-century practice’ as clearly as Balthazar suggests Indeed, the passage in bars 24–8 performs an important structural role in that for the first time in the melody the composer introduces predominant function in the tonic key, thereby giving greatest weight to the cadence in bar 28Google Scholar

5 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, ii, 75Google Scholar

6 Kerman, ‘Lyric Form’, 50 Kerman's variant of the alphanumeric system employs numerical subscripts only to show phrases that deviate in length from the four-bar normGoogle Scholar

7 In this instance the initial period ends in the key of the mediant, the third phrase consists of developmental procedure in the tonic and the fourth phrase continues in the home key Despite the hint of additive return in the mirroring of weak-strong beat articulation of scale degree 5 heard at the outset of phrase 1 at the beginning of the fourth phrase, it is much more natural to hear this melody in binary form than in ternary The melodic recall at the beginning of phrase 4 does not extend further than a single pitch and the new accompaniment pattern introduced in phrase 3 (a common feature of developmental areas) is maintained into the fourth phraseGoogle Scholar

8 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, i, 14Google Scholar

9 Kerman, ‘Lyric Form’, 48Google Scholar

10 Tomlinson, Cary, ‘Verdi after Budden’, 19th-century Music, 5 (1981–2), 170–82 (p 176)Google Scholar

11 Other examples include Dio di Giuda, Emani involami; Jacopo's Dal più remoto esilio, I due Foscari, Act 1, Sempre all'alba ed alla sera, Ezio's Dagli immortali vertici, Attila, Act 2, Corrado's Tutto pareo sorridere, Il corsaro, Act 1Google Scholar

12 Those who hear the fifth phrase in this type of extension as ‘subsidiary’ must surely hear the third phrase in Amina's Come per me sereno from the first act of Bellini's La sonnambula as subsidiary as well This melody is a four-phrase structure, in which the second phrase ends with a strong tonic cadence and the third is made up of two-bar units that each terminate with tonic harmony (with the mediant uppermost in the first and the tonic uppermost in the second) Like the fifth phrase in the Verdian extended type, this third phrase introduces new orchestral figuration – surely as a way of providing textural variety in a melody that stays anchored to the tonic throughoutGoogle Scholar

13 Kerman, ‘Lyric Form’, 58Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 52Google Scholar

15 In L'atra magion the first two bars are repeated literally and are followed by a four-bar continuation (2 + 2 + 4) Though uncommon as a strategy for building an antecedent, the 1 + 1 + 2 formation does appear on occasion, a famous example is Rigoletto's Ah! veglia o donna in Rigoletto, Act 1.Google Scholar

16 Dahlhaus, Carl, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans J Bradford Robinson (Berkěley, 1989), 117Google Scholar

17 Hepokoski, James, Giuseppe Verdi ‘Otello’ (Cambridge, 1987), 156 and 159 Because of the large number of conventional binary melodies and ternary melodies without melodic return in the repertory, in my view Hepokoski somewhat overstates the case that there is ‘an implied [melodic] reprise’ in Ora per sempre, the effect of 'choking off to which Hepokoski refers is created, I believe, largely because near the end of the melody Verdi prolongs the dominant of E♭ major for three bars, only to effect a weak resolution to E♭ and suddenly veer back to the home tonic of A♭ major with a complete cadential progression in less than two bars A melodic reprise is, none the less, certainly an option that Verdi might have exercised in the melody and Hepokoski convincingly shows how this might have been accomplishedGoogle Scholar

18 Balthazar does not make a direct comparison between these two melodies, they are discussed in different parts of his studyGoogle Scholar