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 Music Analysis, 27/i (2008) 137© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UKand 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2249.2008.00283.x

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKMUSAMusic Analysis0262-52451468-2249 © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.XXXOriginal ArticleB

 

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Preliminaries

 

Although published as recently as 2006, James Hepokoski’s and WarrenDarcy’s much heralded and substantially delayed Elements of Sonata Theory

 

has

been a significant presence in the field of music theory and analysis for over adecade.

 

1

 

Indeed, one reads this monumental work with an unavoidable senseof déjà-lu

 

. Draft copies were frequently quoted in conference papers and articlesfor several years prior to publication. Also, many of the book’s key precepts areaired by both authors in a variety of publications dating from 1992 onwardsdealing with works by Beethoven, Bruckner, Sibelius and Richard Straussamongst others, as well as historical issues such as the reception of Beethoven’ssymphonies and theoretical concepts including the so-called ‘sonata principle’,‘rotation’, ‘deformation’ and the ‘medial caesura’.

 

2

 

Given the intense level of advance exposure for the authors’ ideas and the wealth of insightful precursor

texts about sonata form in the High Classical Era, it is not self-evident thatthere is actually a gap in the existing literature for Elements of Sonata Theory

 

to fill, all the more so since the book was pre-empted by its main marketcompetitor, William Caplin’s commanding and elegantly concise Classical  Form

 

.

 

3

 

Nevertheless, closer inspection reveals that the publication of Elementsof Sonata Theory

 

is justified at least by its encyclopaedic aspect, by the incor-poration of just enough new material (the concluding three chapters onMozart’s concertos in particular) and by the elaboration and refinement of some fundamental premises.

Chapters 1 to 4 situate Sonata Theory within the field and introduce its coreprecepts. Hepokoski and Darcy broadly identify three main strands in existingthought about sonata form: the ‘sonata principle’ elaborated first by EdwardCone and then by Charles Rosen, which stresses the notion that sonatamovements dramatise fundamental properties of the Classical Style, especiallypolarisation and resolution, and which thus requires that non-tonic material inthe secondary and closing areas of the exposition be recapitulated in the tonicor else ‘brought into a closer relation’ with it (p. 242); what Mark Evan Bondsterms the ‘conformational view’, propounded initially in nineteenth-century

 

 Formenlehren

 

beginning with those of Carl Czerny and A. B. Marx, which

essentially sees sonata form as an architectural or tectonic blueprint; and what

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Bonds labels the ‘generative view’, first expounded in detail by Schoenberg,which regards sonata forms as products of material process.

 

4

 

In contrast,Sonata Theory claims to transcend all these viewpoints, positing that classicalcomposers are in ‘dialogue’ with a constellation of ‘generic defaults’, which arehierarchically organised according to frequency of usage. When classicalcomposers override ‘standard options’, they ‘deform’ generic conventions.Naturally, the ‘genre sonata form’ is subject to ‘diachronic transformation’,with the result that constellations of norms undergo incremental change: adeformation in, for example, Beethoven can ‘become a lower-level default inSchumann, Liszt or Wagner’ (p. 11). Owing to the progressive reification of sonata ‘defaults’ through theoretical abstraction, departures from the norm inworks by nineteenth-century composers are increasingly in dialogue withtextbook models. Nevertheless, the authors contend that most of the ‘sonatanorms remained in place as regulative ideas throughout the nineteenth century’

(p. vii).In order to construct a convincing analysis of any classical movement,Sonata Theory maintains that one has to identify ‘the essential generic markers’of sonata works in the High Classical Style. These markers form a hierarchic-ally organised ‘generic layout’, shaped on the highest level by an ‘essentialsonata trajectory’ (EST) that comprises the three ‘action zones’ or ‘rotations’traditionally labelled ‘exposition’, ‘development’ and ‘recapitulation’. Theexposition unfolds an ‘essential expositional trajectory’ (EET) and culminatesin an ‘essential expositional closure’ (EEC), usually in the form of a perfectauthentic cadence (PAC) in a non-tonic key. The EEC is paralleled in the

recapitulation by an ‘essential structural closure’ (ESC) that affirms the tonic.The EET breaks down into four principal ‘spaces’ – primary, secondary,transitional and closing (P, S, TR and C) – with TR and S being demarcatedby ‘a mid-expositional break or medial caesura (MC)’. The EET is ‘launched’by P, supplied with ‘energy gain’ in TR, ‘relaunched’ by S and closed by C.On a lower level, the four ‘spaces’ within the expositional and recapitulatoryaction zones are made up of ‘spans’ punctuated by clear PACs, and the spansare themselves normally further broken down into ‘modules’. Since the EETconcludes in a non-tonic key, it is a ‘structure of promise’, whereas the full, tonic-directed ESC constitutes a ‘structure of accomplishment’. Many sonata-formmovements of course have slow introductions and/or codas, which are classifiedas ‘parageneric’ areas lying outside sonata space. Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s viewof sonata form is thus ostensibly a mixture of temporal and spatial concerns.It is also predominantly goal-directed – concerned more with endings thanbeginnings – and tonally orientated, despite the distinction the authors drawbetween what they term ‘tonal form’ and ‘rhetorical form’, which ‘includespersonalized factors of design and ad hoc

 

expression’ (p. 23). Indeed, the ESTis basically a reformulation of an interrupted Schenkerian Ursatz

 

.

 

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Chapters 5 to 13 are devoted to fleshing out the details of the ‘generic

layout’. Chapter 14 deals with issues specific to the minor mode and Chapter

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15 examines various properties of the ‘three- and four-movement sonatacycle’. The final seven chapters (16 to 23) propose and extensively elaboratea taxonomy of five sonata types. Type 1 (common in slow movements andovertures) comprises only an exposition and a recapitulation with no orminimal link and is often called ‘sonata without development’, ‘exposition-recapitulation’, ‘slow-movement sonata’ or ‘sonatina’ form. Type 2, oftenlabelled ‘binary’ or ‘polythematic binary’ sonata form, lacks a ‘full’ recapitulationand has instead what Hepokoski and Darcy prefer to call a ‘tonal resolution’occurring in conjunction with secondary or, less commonly, transitionalmaterial. Type 3 is the standard sonata model with a development and arecapitulation usually, but not invariably, beginning with the opening theme inthe tonic. Type 4 is what is generally known as the ‘sonata rondo’. Finally,Type 5 is the hybrid of ritornello (tutti-solo) principles and other sonata types(usually Type 3) employed in concertos. There are two concluding appendices

further elucidating some of Sonata Theory’s ‘grounding principles’ andterminology.It is of course impossible to deal with all the intricacies of the authors’

arguments without writing another book, so this essay is confined to pursuingsome salient issues: Sonata Theory’s generic affiliations; its three ‘fundamentalaxioms’ of the ‘genre sonata’, ‘rotation’ and ‘deformation’; the taxonomy of fivesonata types; and what I have termed the book’s ‘neologising impulse’. Themain aim of my concluding remarks is to sketch an alternative approach withparticular reference to sonata-form works of the first half of the nineteenthcentury.

 

Generic Affiliations

 

As its title implies, the model for Elements of Sonata Theory

 

is ostensibly thescientific textbook, a genre that essentially requires in excess of 500 double-column pages (which is what we get – 661 pages including appendices andindices, to be precise).

 

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The book’s generic allegiance is confirmed on the firstpage of the Preface: ‘From one perspective the Elements

 

is a research report,the product of our analyses of hundreds of individual movements by Haydn,Mozart, Beethoven, and many surrounding composers of the time (as well aslater composers)’ (p. v). Hence both vocabulary and symbology rely heavily onscientific conventions. As far as the former is concerned, instead of sectionsand themes or thematic groups, there are ‘actions zones’ and ‘spaces’, and thegeneral discourse is throughout liberally peppered with ‘trajectories’, ‘vectors’,‘rotations’ and the like. Even the problematic and much-debated term ‘defor-mation’ is justified by analogy to usage in the physical sciences: ‘“deformation”is descriptive of a certain state of a solid object – a change of shape, a departurefrom its original, normal, or customary state resulting from the application of a force’ (p. 619). As a general rule, sentences seem constructed to maximise

the number of abbreviations and quasi-scientific buzzwords. The description of 

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expositional strategy in Chapter 2 is typical: ‘The large dotted-line arrowin figure 2.1a suggests a broadly vectored trajectory from the start of theexposition to the EEC; the smaller dotted-line arrow below it suggests asubordinate trajectory from the beginning of S to its own point of PAC-closureat the EEC’ (p. 18).

As regards symbols, the diagrams themselves of course draw on mathematicalgraphing conventions (see in particular figures 2.1a and 2.1b on p. 17); all thatis really missing is the use of Greek letters. The different categories of ‘medialcaesura’ are allocated elaborate designations such as ‘V: PAC MC’; thedifferent ‘spans’ of P, S, TR, C and the rest are designated by superscriptintegers (‘P

 

1

 

’, ‘P

 

2

 

’ and so on); and within these spans, any smaller ‘modules’are identified by decimalised superscript integers (‘P

 

1.1

 

’, ‘P

 

1.2

 

’ etc.). A varietyof further symbols is employed for different types of large- and small-scalefunction: ‘ ’ denotes ‘mergers’ or elisions, subscript letters are added to func-

tional chord symbols (for example, ‘V

 

T

 

’ distinguishes a tonicised dominantfrom one that is sounded but not tonicised, which is designated ‘V

 

A

 

’), and soforth. The notation becomes particularly involved where concerto (Type 5)movements are concerned, as the additional ritornello-solo aspect of thestructure spawns extra colons and backwards slashes: an individual modulewithin ‘P-space’ in the opening orchestral ritornello is, for instance, identifiedas ‘R1:\P

 

1.1

 

’. When entire ‘action-spaces’ are summarised, convolutedquasi-mathematical formulae result. For example, the ‘recapitulatory rotation’of the evidently deceptively approachable Finale of Mozart’s Piano Sonata inC major, K. 309 (1777), merits the following near-impenetrable sequence: ‘

 

P

 

rf 

 

[S

 

1.4

 

 —(’) Episode S

 

1.2

 

 —] (’) S

 

1.1

 

S

 

1.3

 

S

 

1.4

 

RT! (’) [P

 

rf 

 

!! S

 

1.2

 

!!](’) C [S

 

1.4

 

!!]’(p. 412).

As the Preface leads the reader to expect, scientific metaphor also governsthe presentation of key concepts and the evaluation of major ‘generic markers’within movements. In fact, the initial elucidation of the central idea of ahierarchy of generic defaults and deformations is defined in terms likely toappeal to the most hard-core of computer enthusiasts:

 

For novice-composers, one might wittily fantasize . . . something on the order of an aggressively complex ‘wizard’ help feature within a late-eighteenth-century

musical computer application, prompting the still-puzzled apprentice with awelter of numerous, successive dialog boxes of general information, tips,pre-selected weighted options, and strong, generically normative suggestions asthe act of composition proceeded. (p. 10)

 

As a result, the chapter on the medial caesura (pp. 23–50), for instance, exudesstatistical propriety, establishing a four-tier hierarchy of defaults on the basis of frequency of occurrence in the sample of ‘hundreds of individual movements’and then defining the structural role of each type of medial caesura partly inpercentage terms: ‘Our research suggests that the deployment of the I: HC

MC is flexible, occurring typically within the 15–45 percent range’ (p. 37);

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‘When selected, the V: HC MC option is typically placed from about 25 to 50percent (more rarely, 60 percent)’ (p. 39); and so on.

This scientific orientation of Elements of Sonata Theory

 

worries me, for itpromises rather more than it delivers. To begin with, in a scientific ‘researchreport’ one would expect a full account of the sample, complete descriptivestatistics and an explanation of sampling methodology. In this particular case,the reader could derive reassurance from confirmation that careful considera-tion had been given to the chronological, geographical and generic distributionin the selection of movements. Given Sonata Theory’s emphasis on hierarchiesof defaults, one would also expect at least some basic statistical analysis. Anexamination of modal frequency, standard deviation and regression, for exam-ple, would clearly add much valuable definition to the bare percentages quotedwith regard to the deployment of different types of medial caesura. Unfortu-nately, readers are obliged to do the spadework for themselves. The sample can

of course be reconstructed from the Index of Works (pp. 639–48). Altogether,665 sonata movements are cited in the book.

 

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The sample is heavily weightedtowards the period c. 1750–90. That is not necessarily a problem given thebook’s subtitle, but the small number of movements (59, or 8.8%) written bycomposers born after 1800 does not obviously imbue with authority theauthors’ claim in the Preface that their theory provides a ‘foundation for con-sidering works from the decades to come’ (p. vii); all the more so, since nearlyall such pieces referred to are overtures or the first movements of symphoniesand more than a quarter of them are by a single composer, specifically Brahms.Even amongst composers born before 1800, Mozart seems unduly prominent;

in fact, his 228 movements constitute 34% of the overall total.When one turns to the 87 actual musical examples drawn from sonata

movements, the skewed nature of the sample becomes yet more troublesome.Fig. 1 breaks these down by composer and genre. Apart from a single overture,only four genres are represented (concerto, keyboard sonata, symphony andstring quartet). Not one movement after Beethoven is actually accorded amusical example and the latest piece to be included is the second movementof Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, Op. 68 (1808). A colossal 76% of the examplesare taken from Mozart’s works, 42% of which are concertos. Tellingly, morethan a quarter (26%) come from just six Mozart pieces: Piano Concertos Nos.

 

Fig. 1 Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s musical examples classified by composer and genre

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9, K. 271 (1777), and 21, K. 467 (1785); the Piano Sonata in F major, K.

280 (1775); Symphonies Nos. 39, K. 543 (1788), and 40, K. 550 (1788); andthe String Quartet in C major, K. 465 (1785).The impression given by all of this is that Sonata Theory has been con-

structed mainly on the basis of a relatively restricted Mozartian corpus, animpression that is reinforced when one scrutinises pieces cited in the text butnot dealt with in any detail. It is not, for instance, evident that the authorsconducted independent analyses of any of the seventeen Clementi piano-sonatamovements to which they refer. All the analytical information supplied can befound in Leon Plantinga’s 1977 monograph, which contains some implausibleanalytical interpretations.

 

8

 

By way of an example, Fig. 2 summarises the

structure of the Finale of Clementi’s Piano Sonata in B minor, Op. 40 No. 2(published 1802). This has a lengthy slow introduction adumbrating the corecomponents of the primary material, shown in Exs. 1a and 1b. There followsa relatively uncontroversial ‘Allegro’ exposition with clear relative-majorsecondary and closing areas (bars 45

 

2

 

and 63 respectively) prepared by aminor-inflected medial caesura. The retention of minor colouring for the firstbar of the secondary zone creates a slight overlap. The ensuing developmenteschews the main theme in favour of secondary and transitional material, con-cluding at bar 101 with the original medial caesura transposed to the dominantof G minor. At bar 103

 

2

 

the whole of the second theme is then restated in thesubmediant, concluding with an interrupted cadence, which at bar 125 initiatesa transitional extension re-establishing the home dominant. At this point(bar 140), there is an abridged version of the slow introduction followed by alengthy ‘Presto’ coda (bar 153

 

4

 

) that is launched by a frenetic variant of the maintheme. A convincing analysis of this highly individual movement would have toaccount for the fact that what Hepokoski and Darcy would term a ‘Type 2sonata with P-based Coda’ enters into dialogue with the ‘deformational’categories of the ‘non-tonic recapitulation’ and a variant of the ‘introduction-coda’frame. Plantinga overlooks all that, unfeasibly identifying the ‘Presto’ coda as

the recapitulation.

 

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His interpretation ignores many core concerns of Sonata

 

Fig. 2 Formal summary of Clementi, Piano Sonata in B minor, Op. 40 No. 2, ii

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Ex. 1a Clementi, Piano Sonata in B minor, Op. 40 No. 2/ii, bars 1–13

Ex. 1b Clementi, Piano Sonata in B minor, Op. 40 No. 2/ii, bars 232 –331

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Theory – particularly in its failure to mark the ‘crux’ (the ‘moment of rejoiningthe events of the expositional pattern after once having departed from them’;see p. 240) – yet the authors seem simply to assume that Plantinga’s analysisis valid and cite Clementi’s movement in passing as an example of a piece inwhich a slow introduction returns before the recapitulation. In fact, Clementi’sstrategy seems much bolder: to apply Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s term, therestatement of the slow introduction ‘overwrites’ the tonic return of theprimary material, to which it is motivically related.

Admittedly, the heavy concentration on Mozart’s music would not matter if this composer’s output broadly constituted both a microcosm of the classicalrepertoire and the central point of reference for later composers. But even acasual perusal of the wider repertoire suggests that in many key respectsMozart was atypical. Two areas given extensive treatment in Elements of SonataTheory are the concerto and the minor mode. In terms of late-eighteenth and

early nineteenth-century practice, crucial aspects of Mozart’s concerto pro-cedures are anomalous. For example, in the first movements of Mozart’s pianoconcertos his default in the opening ritornello (‘R1’) is to state the secondarymaterial in the tonic: only a single concerto (No. 11, K. 413, of 1782–3) hasan R1 foreshadowing the soloist’s non-tonic secondary material, and themodulation is cancelled within ‘S-space’. The common practice in the periodaround the turn of the nineteenth century and beyond was, however, to writea tonally mobile R1, a procedure found in five of John Field’s seven pianoconcertos, five of Dussek’s, six of Cramer’s, two of Hummel’s, two of Steibelt’s,four by Moscheles, two by Ries, three by Beethoven, Chopin’s No. 2, and

many others.10  Similarly, Mozart’s concertos appear not to have served asmodels for major early nineteenth-century composers: Mendelssohn’s PianoConcerto No. 1 (1831) conducts an extended dialogue with Weber’s FirstPiano Concerto (1810) and Konzertstück in F minor (1821), whilst Schumann’sPiano Concerto (1845) derives much of its first-movement sonata procedureand even thematic material from Field’s Piano Concerto No. 7 (1832).11

The situation regarding the minor mode is analogous. Mozart’s overwhelmingpreference is for a i–III exposition answered by a recapitulation in which therelative-major secondary and closing material is recast in the tonic minor. Thisconsistency of approach is, however, unusual. Haydn was much more variedin his minor-mode practice, frequently deploying the major mode for variouscombinations of secondary and closing material in his recapitulations – theFinale of the Piano Trio No. 19 in G minor, Hob. 15/19 (c. 1794), evenanswers a i–III exposition with a recapitulation entirely in the major mode.Beethoven’s minor-mode procedures are also more pluralistic. Joseph Kermanhas identified two principal ‘Beethovenian syndromes’: ‘the hankering of Cminor for its parallel major and the tropism of other minor keys toward theirminor dominants’.12 Moreover, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture in C minor,Op. 62 (1808), has a ‘three-key exposition’ (described as a type of ‘trimodular

block’ or ‘TMB’ in Elements of Sonata Theory) and a non-tonic recapitulation

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(pp. 120 and 164), and his Egmont   Overture in F minor, Op. 84 (1809–10),deploys what Hepokoski and Darcy describe as a deformational ‘non-resolvingrecapitulation’ (p. 247).13  Kerman considers Beethoven’s habits ‘abberrantaccording to the norms of the Classic period’, but Beethoven actually shareshis predilection for i–v expositions with Clementi, who wrote a larger proportionof minor movements relative to his total sonata output than Haydn, Mozart orBeethoven, and who frequently composed three-key expositions, as well asnon-tonic and non-resolving recapitulations. In fact, in Clementi’s solokeyboard music, his most common response to a i–III exposition is a non-tonicrecapitulation.14

In sum, Elements of Sonata Theory  is above all a book about Mozart (andparticularly his concertos), a fact which renders the authors’ claims of large-scalehistorical and geographical applicability questionable. Given their sample, it isimpossible for the reader to know what to make of broad statements such as

the following: the ‘second- or third-tier repertory – encompassing thousands of less ambitious and now largely forgotten works – is where, from the perspectiveof the five sonata types, numerous hard cases are likely to be found’ (p. 387).Perhaps a more focused agenda and title might have been more appropriate.Significantly, Caplin’s Classical Form is more realistically subtitled  A Theory of  Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven andadheres closely to its brief. By succumbing to the (predominantly NorthAmerican) institutional imperative for generalised theories that can be used asthe basis for readily classifiable and controllable schools of thought, Hepokoskiand Darcy actually seem to have blunted the impact of the valuable observations

they have to make about a specific repertoire.The quasi-scientific vocabulary is equally off-putting. Working in an environ-

ment dominated by mathematicians, physical scientists and engineers, I hearthe words ‘rotation’ and ‘vector’ in a variety of contexts on almost a daily basis.A scientific definition of ‘rotation’ is turning in a plane through a given angle,a description that will hold in any dimension; a ‘vector’ is a quantity havingdirection as well as magnitude, denoted by a line drawn from its original to itsfinal position.15 It is of course impossible to reconcile either of these definitionswith Sonata Theory’s EST. In that context, ‘rotation’ would appear merely todenote circular recurrence of a thematic pattern and the ‘vectored trajectoryfrom the start of the exposition to the EEC’ seems to constitute little morethan a move from an initial tonic to an emphatic cadence in a secondary key.The patience of readers is further tested when they are asked to conceptualiseimpossible linguistic compounds such as a ‘generic vector’. Consequently,when working through Elements of Sonata Theory  one is constantly forced toscour the ‘Terms and Abbreviations’ section (pp. xxv–xxviii) and the nearestdictionary only to discover that much simpler and more suitable alternativeterminology is available.

Readers might at least expect the system of symbols and abbreviations to be

applied consistently, but even here there are problems. The criteria for

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allocating the initial integers to zonal labels appear to be reasonably clear, if not uncontestable: ‘P1  will move on to P2  only after a first PAC has beenattained’ (p. 71). Unfortunately, inconsistencies soon emerge. In cases where,for example, ‘S-space’ begins with music that ‘seems preparatory to a moredecisive … module’, that music is designated as ‘S0’ even if there is no PACbetween ‘S0’ and ‘S1’. The situation is yet more confusing when an expositionhas an ‘apparent double medial caesura’. In such instances, the standard labelsare liable to be replaced by ‘TMB1’, ‘TMB2’ and ‘TMB3’ (denoting the con-stituent units of a ‘trimodular block’) ‘even though in most cases the wholeTMB covers only a single cadential span’ (p. 72). Highlighting the latterdiscrepancy is not mere pedantry, because the use of two systems of labellingimplies that a standard exposition with one medial caesura is fundamentallydifferent from an exposition incorporating a trimodular block.

Fig. 3 summarises Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s analysis of the first-movementexposition of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C major, Op. 2 No. 3 of 1794–5(pp. 172–5). Bars 25 to 26 are interpreted as a ‘I: HC medial caesura, with

GP gap’. The ensuing ‘flawed’ minor-mode cantabile theme (‘TMB1’) soonbegins to modulate sequentially and at bar 39 dissolves into transitional rhetoric(‘TMB2’). This leads to a ‘postmedial caesura, V: HC’ at bar 45 and to a ‘new,cantabile theme, now in the radiantly sunlit G major’ at bar 47 (‘TMB3’). In contrast,Tovey designates bars 27–76 as the ‘Second Group (or Transition and SecondGroup)’, neatly encapsulating the ambiguous status of bars 27–46 withouthaving to invent new terminology.16  There is no real difference of opinionbetween the two readings: both consider the theme at bar 27 to affect second-theme rhetoric but ultimately to prove ‘unsatisfactory’. Tovey’s simple labellinghowever seems more convincingly to reflect the poietic context. In the lateeighteenth-century repertoire, medial caesuras are not restricted to sonata formsand occur in varying numbers within movements. Beethoven was presumablyunaware that two centuries later an ex  post   facto theoretical investigation of thesonata-form practice of his era would make major distinctions on the basis of the precise number of medial caesuras in a piece; nor does it seem likely thathe would have thought his strategy in the expositions of the first movements of Op. 2 No. 3 and his next published sonata, Op. 7 in E w (1797), to be essentiallydifferent, even if the former has two ‘MC-effects’ and the latter only one.

At the smaller modular level, definitions are yet more imprecise. The criteria

for distinguishing ‘P1.1

’ from ‘P1.2

’ and subsequent divisions are sometimes

 

Fig. 3 Summary of Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s analysis of Beethoven, Piano Sonatain C major, Op. 2 No. 3/i, bars 1–90

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thematic and hence related to Caplin’s ‘formal functions’: a pattern of ‘basicidea’ followed by a ‘contrasting idea’ may invoke the succession ‘P1.1, P1.2’. Abewildering variety of other units however receive similar treatment. The readeris actually informed that ‘the practice of decimal designators is no rigid systembut merely a conceptual tool to be used by the individual analyst as he or shesees fit’ (p. 72). Once again, there is a mismatch between the substance andthe packaging of Sonata Theory. Evidently, beneath the surface Hepokoski andDarcy have an affinity with ‘the style of eclectic analytical writing’, which theyidentify in the work of Tovey, Rosen and Kerman amongst others, and fromwhich they ostensibly distance themselves.

The sense of frustration engendered by the book’s non-delivery of impliedscientific rigour is magnified by the contradictory tendency, in some dimensionsof its rhetorical strategy, towards uncomfortable colloquialism. To begin with,there are the verbal refrains reminiscent of ancient oral narrative traditions.

Almost all references to Haydn are prefaced by the epithet ‘witty’, despite thefact that Daniel Chua has argued persuasively that clichéd conceptions of Haydn’s wit have no genuine explanatory force with regard to the composer’smusic.17 (As a rule of thumb, whilst Sonata Theory seems to view Haydn as de facto  witty, Mozart has to override a prominent default to exhibit wit;Beethoven is permitted to be witty only in limited circumstances.) The virtuallyautomatic appending of ‘lights out’ to appearances of the words ‘minormode’ is even more disconcerting, especially to those whose first language isnot American English. And the strange talking musical instruments andsonata movements are the very stuff of dark fairytales, if not childhood

nightmares. The solo exposition (‘S1’) in the first movement of Mozart’s ViolinConcerto No. 4 in D, K. 218 (1775), is particularly disturbing, with the violinand orchestra suddenly striking up a conversation with Commendatore-likeovertones:

‘I’m willing to participate on the terms that you have proposed to me. Shall wecontinue?’ The orchestra responds with pure affirmation, welcoming the soloistsinto the game with a deal-making handshake and opening the gateway to themore forward-vectored TR that immediately follows: ‘Accepted! Now let’s builda sonata. Onward!’ (p. 522)

Allied to all this is the authors’ frequent habit of reiterating straightforwardconcepts. Does someone capable of apprehending the quasi-mathematicalformula describing the Finale of Mozart’s Sonata K. 309 quoted abovereally need to be told several times that in Mozart’s concertos it is thenorm for ‘S-space’ to begin in the tonic in the opening ritornello? Whilstone can appreciate that it is difficult for a co-authored book to maintain aconsistency of tone, the sharp rhetorical fluctuations in Elements of SonataTheory  create a sense of confusion about generic identity and the book’s

intended readership.

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experimentation to take place; and why should a sonata’s position within amulti-movement work supersede all parameters of its internal organisation?

Still more troubling is the fact that Sonata Theory is entirely out of kilterwith modern genre theory as expounded, for instance, in John Frow’s excellent2006 monograph on the topic.19  The prevailing opinion is that genre arisesfrom the interaction of a diversity of dimensions – formal structure, thematicstructure, mode of presentation, rhetorical function, and so on – and hence thatgeneric affiliations are identified above all through the ‘intertwined effectsof form and framing’.20  This surely means that it is of fundamental importwhether a sonata form occurs in the first movement of a symphony or the Kyrieof a mass. Furthermore, it is difficult to reconcile Hepokoski’s and Darcy’sconcept of generic non-availability with the modern literary view that texts ‘useor perform the genres by which they are shaped’ and that the relationshipbetween text and genre ‘is one of productive elaboration rather than of 

derivation or determination’.21

 In these terms, every text or piece of music isto an extent sui generis; pace Hepokoski’s recent analysis of The Ruins of Athens,Op. 113 (1811), it is perfectly possible that Beethoven might experiment at thistime with a ternary instead of a sonata-form schema for an overture.22

The ‘foundational axiom’ of ‘rotation’ is advocated with particular tenacity.As noted above, ‘rotation’ refers to recycling of the thematic pattern establishedin the exposition. The contention is that this ‘referential layout’ acts as atemplate for not only the recapitulation but also the development and in manyinstances even the coda. To account for the fact that relatively few develop-ments literally cycle through the expositional materials in the original order, a

plethora of modifications is devised: ‘developmental half-rotations, truncatedrotations, rotations with episodic substitutes “writing over” some of theexpected individual elements, rotation with newly included interpolations,internal digressions from the governing rotational thread, occasional reorder-ings of the modules, and the like’ (p. 613). Where a secondary area begins witha variant of the primary theme (common in Haydn), the exposition is alsodeemed to consist of two ‘subrotations’ (p. 136). In contrast to the idea of sonata form as genre, the notion of rotation as ‘an archetypal principle of musical structure’ is asserted without any real explanation other than thedrawing of unconvincing analogies with clocks, spirals, the daily and yearlycycles and suchlike. Signing up to the rotational way of thinking is thusessentially an act of quasi-religious faith, as is implied by the authors’ at timeshighly metaphysical rhetoric: ‘Rotational procedures are grounded in a dialecticof persistent loss (the permanent death of each instant as it lapses into thenext) and the impulse to seek a temporal “return to the origin”, a cyclicalrenewal and rebeginning’ (p. 611).

The analytical consequences of accepting the rotational principle asnon-negotiable are far-reaching. To begin with, one has to abandon the widelydisseminated concepts of ‘mirror’, ‘reversed’ and ‘partly reversed’ recapitula-

tions endorsed by writers from Schumann to Rosen, Timothy Jackson and

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beyond.23  Hepokoski and Darcy prefer to view movements exhibiting suchcharacteristics as Type 2 sonatas with codas or ‘coda-rhetoric interpolations’based on primary material (see pp. 232, 344, 354, 365–9 and 382–3). Similarly,Sonata Theory does not accommodate the standard interpretation of theABACB1A variant of the sonata rondo (Type 4) that is favoured by Mozart,for instance, as an incomplete realisation (with the third A omitted) of a fullABACAB1A design. Instead, the theory decrees that the ABACB1A format isa ‘tri-rotational’, ‘Expanded Type 1 Sonata-Rondo Mixture’ in which thesecond (recapitulatory) rotation features a ‘pronounced internal expansion’ or‘billowing out’ (that is, the C section) between A and the transitional link intoB1  (see pp. 409–12). It is apparently not a problem that this line of analyticalinterpretation can produce very lopsided proportions (the Finale of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 58 of 1804–7 has a second rotationspanning nearly half the movement, for instance). As regards concertos, the

workings of Type 5 movements can at times be so convoluted that the authorsare forced to invent the ‘rotationally neutral slot’: an ‘out-of-order’ module thatis deemed to be ‘inert’ and thus to lie outside the main rotational sphere – asort of analytical joker to be played in times of exegetic extremis (see, forexample, pp. 525 and 558).

Attentive reading of Elements of Sonata Theory uncovers a significant degreeof insecurity about the rotational metaphor. Non-rotational approaches arerepeatedly rejected in surprisingly hard-line language: the ‘reverse recapitulation’is described in particularly aggressive terms as a ‘fallacy’ or ‘misjudgement’and non-believers are roundly chastised: ‘Here the primacy of the rotational

principle – obvious enough for those who choose to observe it – trumpstraditional, erroneous terminology’ (p. 354). (As a general rule, in this bookthe more debatable a theoretical concept is, the more strident is its linguisticformulation.) In addition, a number of writers regarded with circumspectionor even suspicion elsewhere in the text are enlisted to endorse rotation. Rosenis cited in support of the notion of the development as a second rotation(pp. 612–13) of the ‘referential layout’. Reicha and Czerny are also alleged todescribe rondos in rotational terms (pp. 390–2), although they are censuredelsewhere for failing to acknowledge the Type 2 sonata format (p. 365).24

There would indeed appear to be much about which Hepokoski and Darcyneed to be defensive. As is argued above, the term ‘rotation’ itself is not reallyappropriate in this one-dimensional context. A more accurate scientificmetaphor might be ‘periodicity’, and periodicity can undergo permutation,which suggests that the re-arrangement of material proposed by the ‘reverserecapitulation’ concept is scarcely the anathema that the authors assert it tobe. Nor is it clear why a development rotation should be equated with anexposition rotation, even where the former works the expositional material inprecisely the same order. This is because the exposition’s succession of ‘tight-knit’ and ‘loose-knit’ units (Caplin’s terms) as well as its patterns of 

textural and tonal stability and instability are entirely different from those in a

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development. The defining characteristic of developments is in fact contrast,normally in the form of looser organisation dominated by fragmentation andsequential progression. This led A. B. Marx to apply his general Ruhe-Bewegung-Ruhe model to sonata form, assigning the Bewegung  function to thedevelopment;25  Caplin too describes the development as ‘a higher-levelanalogue to the contrasting middle section in a small ternary form’.26 In short,the propositions that in developments thematic order takes precedence and that‘nonrotational events’ are apprehended as ‘writing over a more normativelyrotational option’ are entirely contentious.

A further problem is that the analytical gymnastics required to preserverotational rectitude often result in readings of specific pieces that are con-voluted to the point of being counter-intuitive. An obvious case in point is thefirst movement of Mozart’s much-analysed Piano Sonata in D, K. 311 (1777).The overwhelming majority of commentators classify this movement as a Type

3 sonata with a ‘reverse recapitulation’ of some sort; Hepokoski’s and Darcy’sanalysis – which, typically for this book, is scattered across numerous anddisparate sections (see in particular pp. 292, 377 and 385) – deems it to be acomplex deformation of the Type 2 referential layout. The exposition isrelatively straightforward, with clearly demarcated zonal boundaries. Thecomplications begin after the double bar. Fig. 4 offers a skeletal summary of the second part of the movement. The development avoids the main themealtogether: it begins by working the gesture that closed the exposition (‘C2’)and then in bars 58–65 (equivalent to bars 28–35 in the exposition) reiteratesthe latter stages of the second span of the subordinate thematic complex in the

subdominant. A sequential passage loosely based on bars 103 –12 (which exhibittransitional rhetoric) then leads to the ‘crux’, which commences in bar 75 withthe untransposed ‘dominant lock’ of the original ‘I: HC’ medial caesura(bars 13–16), complete with conventional ‘triple-hammer-blow’ effect. Whatfollows is not the main theme but a modified and minimally expanded tonicreturn of the secondary material (bars 784 –98) partly clouded by modal mixture(bars 83–86). The concluding fourteen bars, shown in Ex. 2, are described byHepokoski and Darcy thus: ‘we regard the return of the incipit (only) of P in

 

Fig. 4 Formal summary of Mozart Piano Sonata in D, K. 311/i, bars 40–112

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be a simple case of the tail wagging the dog: surely the original four-bar closinggesture is best seen as an appendage to an expanded version of the first theme?There are in fact many similarly problematic instances in the repertoire. TheFinale of Clementi’s Piano Sonata in G minor, Op. 50 No. 3, ‘Didoneabbandonata’ (published 1821), is a clear example: an orthodox rotationalreading of the closing stages of this movement would presumably dictate thatthe nineteen bars (bars 403–421) before the brief final, cadential C module are‘coda-rhetoric interpolation’ (see p. 288 for an unambiguous general pro-nouncement to this effect), whereas all other structural parameters indicatethat a coda beginning in bar 403 concludes with a short end-rhyme recallingthe close of the exposition in the tonic. In sum, a strict rotational readingof the first movement of Mozart’s K. 311 is essentially non-congruent withthe movement’s rhetorical thrust. Of course, Hepokoski and Darcy are awareof the large-scale problem here, but their explanation does little to reassure the

sceptical: ‘once … audibly “thrown away” as an option, a non-normative Type2 sonata deformation could apparently be recuperated by simple fiat ’ (p. 376).All this is not to claim that foregrounding thematic over tonal concerns

cannot be analytically productive in some cases. Such an approach shedsvaluable light when, for example, a recapitulation appears to begin in a non-tonic key. The closing stages of the development in the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 10 No. 2 in F major (1796–7), prepare thedominant of the relative minor and the opening theme begins at bar 118 in thesubmediant major. The whole of the opening thematic gesture is heard in Dmajor, after which a ‘distorted and expanded’ version of the initial material

(bars 131–136) moves to the dominant of F major. Beethoven then proceeds withthe second module of the primary material in the tonic. Hepokoski and Darcyare persuasive in arguing that in this instance ‘it is preferable to concludethat the recapitulation itself begins in VI, m. 118, and self-corrects en route’(pp. 272–5). Similarly convincing conclusions might be reached about therecapitulations of eight Clementi major-mode movements, which – whilstretaining the essential rhetorical structure of their original expositions – begin byreiterating the main unit of the primary thematic complex in a non-tonic keyand then modulate before resuming in the tonic where they left off.27 Never-theless, in the main Elements of Sonata Theory seems concerned with the fixed,unvarying aspects of repetition to such an extent that a core feature of theClassical Style, namely modified repetition’s potential for dynamic growth, isdisappointingly neglected.

Of the three ‘fundamental axioms’ I have singled out for comment,deformation has unquestionably already occasioned the largest volume of debate.28 As Joseph Straus has observed, the very word ‘deformation’ carriesunfortunate connotations of damage and disability that are not dispelled byHepokoski’s and Darcy’s lengthy defence in Appendix 1 (pp. 614–21), amini-essay presumably designed largely to counter Straus’s critique.29 Ter-

minological nuances aside, the basic definition of ‘deformation’ as a rejection

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of ‘all normative default options’ (p. 11) seems straightforward enough, butone does not need to go much further to run into difficulties. Since defaultsare viewed hierarchically, the distinction between a default and a deformationlies on a continuum; unfortunately, however, there is no clear steer as to howuncommon a procedure has to be for it to become a deformation. For example,Beethoven appears to be permitted three defaults for his subordinate key inminor-mode sonata movements – III, v and VI in that order – but when hedeploys the dominant underpinning a medial caesura in first inversion ratherthan root position he is immediately in deformational territory, despite the factthat the precise inversion of the chord might very well escape detection by alistener or even an analyst (see the comments about Beethoven’s CoriolanOverture on p. 316). Altogether, decisions as to which procedures qualify asdefaults and which constitute deformations seem to be made on an ad hocbasis. Moreover, as Straus points out, in spite of Sonata Theory’s ostensibly

dialogical formulation, the actual idea of a hierarchy of defaults means thatthe theory is underpinned by a conformational mentality, because individualmovements are viewed as more or less normative in relation to a ‘generic’layout that is to all intents and purposes a tectonic scheme.30 It is thus hard toaccept that the concept of deformation supersedes Bonds’s conformational-generative opposition.

As regards the nineteenth century, the notion of deformation creates twofurther problems. First, it accrues additional complications through theincreasingly important extra dimension of a dialogue between compositionalpractice and theory, represented principally by the Formenlehre tradition. Since

the various theoretical formulations of sonata procedure in texts by Reicha,Marx, Czerny, Richter et al  are in key respects incompatible, it is not possibleto identify a composite nineteenth-century model that can be used as a pointof dialogic reference.31 Second, the post-Beethovenian repertoire very rapidlybecomes resistant to analysis in terms of Sonata Theory’s ‘generic norms’.As Julian Horton and I have argued elsewhere, there is scarcely a singleMendelssohn sonata-form movement written after 1824 that does not contra-vene Sonata Theory’s ‘generic layout’.32 Also, the number of what Elements of Sonata Theory classifies as ‘failed’ expositions (that is, those that do not reacha satisfactory ESC) increases exponentially after the death of Beethoven (a factthat is alluded to briefly but understated on p. 177). The question thereforearises: why apply a model distinguishing between an ‘ideal type’ and divergencein practice to a repertoire in which deviations overwhelmingly predominate?

Hepokoski and Darcy present a possible answer to all the above throughtheir assertion that their ‘generic layout’ is primarily a ‘heuristic’ tool andconsequently ahistorical; in their own words, ‘what one chooses to call a sonatatype or a sonata form depends on the interpretive purposes one has in mindfor doing so’ (p. 343). But their concept of the ‘genre sonata’ as a ‘regulativeidea guiding analytical interpretation’ (p. 343) is difficult to reconcile with their

dialogical approach to form, for it would appear to lead to the insupportable

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conclusion that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century composers are enteringinto a dialogue with ‘generic norms’ devised as heuristic tools in the latetwentieth century.

Sonata Categories

The authors’ preoccupation with ‘rotation’ has major implications for theirbasic taxonomy of sonata types: indeed, on the basis of the doubts just raisedabout this concept it is arguable that two sonata categories might be dispensedwith altogether. The odd-numbered categories – the ‘sonata without develop-ment’, the standard format with development, and the sonata-ritornello hybridemployed in concertos – are scarcely likely to trigger dissent. (Naturally, thereare the usual issues connected to making distinctions at the margins, forinstance between a Type 1 movement with a more than usually substantial link

between exposition and recapitulation and a Type 3 movement with a relativelyshort development, but such potential ambiguities are duly acknowledged; seepp. 344 and 386–7.) But the even-numbered types – the so-called ‘binary’ or‘polythematic’ sonata layout (Type 2) and the sonata rondo (Type 4) – aremore problematic. The former is described as follows (p. 354): ‘Type 2 sonatasdo not have recapitulations at all, in the strict sense of the term. Instead, theirsecond rotations have developmental spaces (P–TR or, sometimes, their episodicsubstitutes) grafted onto tonal resolutions (S–C)’. There are two basic Type 2strategies, which might provisionally be labelled ‘Type 2a’ and ‘Type 2b’. Thefirst of these is the straightforward pattern, in which the thematic correspond-

ence between the form’s two parts usually begins midway through the transi-tional material and the movement concludes with the secondary and closingmaterial only in the tonic. Type 2b is the more elaborate and theoreticallycontroversial ‘mirror’ or ‘reversed-recapitulation’ format, whereby the latterstages of the second part begin by restating the secondary theme in the tonic,but then interpolate primary material in the tonic either before or after theclosing material.

A variety of opinions about these models is expressed in the literature. JamesWebster, for example, proposes in his 2001 New Grove article on ‘Sonata Form’that neither can be classified as a genuine sonata structure:

The recapitulation almost always enters unambiguously with the ‘simultaneousreturn’ of the opening theme in the tonic … . If the main theme never returns,or if the return to the tonic is delayed until the second group, the movement isin one or another version of rounded binary form. In the pure type, the first groupnever returns … or it may follow the second group, producing ‘mirror’ form. 33

Charles Rosen would seem to agree with Webster in viewing Type 2a as avariant of binary form, but he diverges in endorsing ostensibly the classificationof the Type 2b option as a sonata form with reversed recapitulation.34 Eugene

Wolf’s article on ‘Sonata Form’ in the 2003 edition of the Harvard Dictionary

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of Music sits on the fence, stating that opinion is divided as to whether types2a and 2b are ‘polythematic’ binary and ‘mirror’ forms or sonata variants.35

Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s account of the history of Type 2 (pp. 355–69)quickly reveals the cause of the disagreements. They identify as Type 2’sprincipal ‘historical antecedents’ two binary-form blueprints that are plentifulamongst, for instance, Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas: ‘balanced’ binary, which ischaracterised by an extended end-rhyme between the two parts; and what someterm ‘parallel’ binary, ‘in which the second part tracks the melodic materialpresented in the first, while reversing its original tonic/nontonic motion’(p. 355). A few proto-sonata movements written in the 1730s and 1740s by C.P. E. Bach, Sammartini and others favour formats in which a return to thetonic coincides with secondary material. Type 2 then became a moderatelypopular, if not frequent, choice for sonata movements written in the middle of the eighteenth century (J. C. Bach and Johann Stamitz were particular expo-

nents). As a result, a number of early Haydn and Mozart works containvarious versions of the basic plan. But because, after 1770 (arguably 1765),‘composers grew to favour the perhaps more dramatic Type 3 structures(with full recapitulations), the Type 2 option was pushed to the margins’(p. 363). Also, the dwindling number of Type 2 movements increasinglyfavoured the Type 2b format (with ‘P-based coda’) over Type 2a. Still, theymaintain that ‘within historically significant composition it [Type 2] neverdisappeared entirely’ (p. 363).

In short, Hepokoski and Darcy accept the assertions of Webster, Rosen andothers that Type 2a in particular is essentially restricted to the period preceding

Rosen’s ‘stylistic revolution of the 1770s’,36 but they object to the notion thatType 2’s short existence, strictly limited usage and swift demise in any wayconstitute ‘an evolutionary process’ in which Type 2 was superseded by thenormative Type 3. According to their fundamentally ahistorical vision of thistopic, Type 2 and Type 3 are ‘viable’ sonata alternatives. This stance is odd,because it directly contradicts their quasi-evolutionary approach to otherissues. A notable example of this is their statement that in the period c.1740–70 many expositions ‘almost’ achieve a two-part structure with a medialcaesura but not quite, an assertion that is backed up by the most overtlybiological of metaphors: ‘One thinks of cell division – mitosis: in metaphaseand anaphase the two cells have begun to divide but have not fully succeededin doing so’ (p. 63).

A closer investigation of Mozart’s involvement with the Type 2 categoryposes an awkward problem. Hepokoski and Darcy identify sixteen Type 2movements by Mozart written up to and including the first movement of K. 311 (1777), examined above.37 Many of the early ones are Type 2a, but fromthe first movement of the Symphony No. 20, K. 133 (1772), onwards, Mozartoverwhelmingly prefers the Type 2b model. After K. 311, Type 2 movementsare very rare indeed. The authors cite the Finale of Eine kleine Nachtmusik,

K. 525 (1787), as a late example, but this movement is of rather a different cast

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to the others and is actually entitled ‘Rondo’. If one tries to view it as a Type2 sonata, there is an initial problem that in the ‘exposition’ the opening themereturns in the dominant as part of the secondary material (bar 32). Also, the‘development’ consists of a reiteration of the main theme and the first fourbars of its continuation (bars 58–68) in the flattened submediant followed bytransitional material that prepares a return of the tonic in conjunction with thesecondary theme (bar 83). As far as the ‘tonal resolution’ is concerned, thereturn of primary material in the tonic at bar 99 is a further complication andthere is even a coda based on the main theme (bar 131). As a result, anyinterpretation of this movement as a deformation of the Type 2 model is clearlytendentious and so Mozart’s compositional career at least indicates that thealways precarious Type 2 sonata was quickly subsumed by the all-conqueringType 3.

The same is true of Mozart’s contemporary Clementi: the greater majority

of his Type 2a movements are also confined to his early career.38

 Moreover, thefew later potential Type 2b pieces create terminological dilemmas for SonataTheory, because they deploy a ‘tonal resolution’ section that either hasadditional ‘rotational’ properties or does not begin in the tonic. The former isexemplified by the first movement of his Piano Sonata in G major, Op. 37 No.2 (published 1798), whose secondary and closing areas in the exposition beginwith variants of the primary theme, but whose recapitulation reverses theprimary and secondary material. Sonata Theory is an awkwardly bluntinstrument with which to approach a movement like this: on one level there isa ‘tonal return’ rather than a standard recapitulation, but there is also a strong

‘rotational’ element because S and P are so similar. In such cases, positing thatthematic reversal occurs within an overall Type 3 strategy seems more con-vincing. The latter problem is highlighted above all by the Finale of the PianoSonata in B minor, Op. 40 No. 2, which is summarised in Fig. 2 above.Because of the development’s avoidance of the main theme, Sonata Theorywould view this as a ‘Type 3 Type 2’ conversion: a movement, the develop-mental content of which implies a Type 3 structure, but which recuperates ‘bysimple  fiat ’ the Type 2 model in the closing stages (see pp. 376–8). As wasobserved above, however, when the crux is reached at bar 101 the end of thetransition and the secondary material are reiterated in the submediant, not thetonic major. (It is a common feature in the minor mode for Clementi torecapitulate at least some of his secondary material in the submediant major.)39

The tonic minor is not reasserted until the return of the slow introduction atbar 140, which means that bar 101 cannot be a ‘tonal resolution’ despite theclear return of expositional rhetoric.

It might be tempting to classify this movement as an abstruse, one-off deformation of the Type 2b ground plan, but in fact it exemplifies a teleologicalstrategy combining reordering of themes with a reversal of expositional tonal‘trajectory’ that resurfaces in a number of nineteenth-century works, including

the Finale of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 in E major (1881–3), the first

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movement of Anton Rubinstein’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in D minor (1864;revised 1872) and Schubert ‘s much-debated Quartettsatz in C minor (1820).40

The Bruckner movement unfolds a reversed C–S–P–coda thematic plan overa mobile tonal progression that starts in B minor (bar 191) and defers consol-idation of the tonic until the start of the coda (bar 315). The movements byRubinstein and Schubert both have a partly reversed S–C–P thematic patternunderpinned respectively by a VI–VI–i and a V of III–III–I–i tonal scheme.

If the Type 2 category is to be maintained, then it is worth devising a termother than ‘tonal resolution’ for the recapitulatory space and perhaps isolatingthe substantial group of movements with reversed expositional tonal ‘trajectory’as another subcategory (Type 2c). But close scrutiny of the nineteenth-centuryrepertoire alleged to keep alive the Type 2 model by deformation casts greatdoubt on the category’s validity. Fig. 5 lists the sixteen nineteenth-centurypieces that Hepokoski and Darcy identify as a ‘roster of Type 2s and their(often strikingly original) variants’ (p. 364). There are other pieces that mightbe added to the catalogue: the Finale of Spohr’s Double String Quartet in Dminor, Op. 65 (1823) and the first movements of Spohr’s Octet in E major,Op. 32 (1814), Mendelssohn’s Athalia Overture (1845), Chopin’s Cello Sonatain G minor (1845–6), Rubinstein’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and Smetana’sString Quartet No. 1 in E minor, ‘From My Life’ (1876), to name but half adozen. Some of the pieces listed in Fig. 5 appear not to be in sonata form atall, most saliently the first movement of Schubert’s early String Quartet, D. 74,which is better interpreted as a large-scale ‘parallel’ binary in which the secondpart begins with restatement of P in the dominant. Others are more satisfac-torily analysed as Type 3 variants elsewhere in the literature. For instance,Robert Pascall persuasively classifies the Finale of Brahms’s String Quartet,

Op. 51 No. 1, as one of nine Brahms movements exhibiting a structure he

 

Fig. 5  Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s ‘roster’ of nineteenth-century ‘Type 2’ sonatamovements

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terms ‘sonata form with conflated response’, comprising a developmentinterpolated after the recapitulation has begun (at bar 94 in this case).41 (The‘Tragic’ Overture arguably relates to this model, even though it is not amongstPascall’s nine pieces.) Also, the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4 is analysed convincingly by Edward Aldwell and Carl Schachter as having anon-tonic recapitulation beginning in D minor with a truncated triple-fortestatement of the main theme in bar 284.42 Oddly, Hepokoski and Darcy derivetheir view that the return of the second theme in D minor at bar 295 constitutesthe start of the recapitulation from Jackson, even though the Aldwell/Schachterreading more closely resembles Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s approach to othermovements, for instance the first movement of Beethoven’s Op. 10 No. 2.43

They may have been influenced in their thinking by the dominant pedalunderpinning the return of Tchaikovsky’s main theme at bar 284, although atone point they do suggest that a theme occurring over a dominant pedal ‘or

some other tension-producing device’ constitutes ‘the deformation of a genericnorm’ (p. 129; see also p. 143). In fact, in the wake of the startling reiterateddominant pedal that underscores the moment of recapitulation in the firstmovement of Beethoven’s  Appassionata  Sonata, Op. 57 (1804–5), this proce-dure became a higher-level ‘default’ in statistical terms during the secondquarter of the nineteenth century, especially in the music of Mendelssohn andSchumann.44

A number of the pieces in Fig. 5 do ostensibly begin their recapitulatoryspaces with secondary material, but there is invariably an overriding elementof dialogue with the Type 3 model. An obvious case in point is the first

movement of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3. Here Chopin saturates the finalstages of the development (bars 132–134) with voice-leading features of the maintheme, before the crux at bar 135 (corresponding to bar 17 in the exposition);the residues of the primary theme at this juncture thus clearly signify itsabsence from the recapitulatory section proper. The first movement of Chopin’s Cello Sonata deploys a similar strategy. The notion of a structure-defining dialogue with Type 3 is equally pertinent to those pieces with recapit-ulatory spaces involving reversed or partly reversed thematic orders andgoal-directed tonal strategies: Schubert’s Quartettsatz; Mendelsssohn’s  AthaliaOverture; the first movement of Rubinstein’s Piano Concerto No. 4; the Finaleof Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7; Liszt’s Les préludes; and others. The firstmovement of Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 is also probably best interpretedin such terms: the return of the secondary material in E major (bar 181) isunstable, having been prepared by the dominant of F major, and it is only withthe return of the opening material (bar 226) that the tonic (E minor) is fullyconsolidated. Moreover, the Type 2 model is to all intents and purposesirrelevant as far as the Finale of Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 is concerned.All four movements of this symphony are characterised by structuralincompleteness and the first movement has no genuine recapitulation. Hence

there is a strong element of ‘double-function’ or ‘two-dimensional’ form

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(‘multi-movement form within a single movement’), in which the Finale actsas a large-scale recapitulation to the first movement.45  Once again, dialoguewith the Type 3 model is paramount, this time at the level of the whole work.The ‘double-function’ concept is of course also relevant in the case of Liszt’sLes préludes.46

I could continue evaluating the pieces in Fig. 5, but it should by now beclear that it is difficult to identify a single work in the nineteenth-centuryrepertoire where a Type 2-orientated reading is richer and more compellingthan a Type 3-based one. Indeed, in all of these cases, a Type 2 interpretationseems to marginalise much that is of central importance. Hepokoski and Darcydo preface their ‘roster’ of posited nineteenth-century Type 2s with a warning:‘none of the following works should be approached apart from a close awarenessof how the Type 2 sonata was transformed and subjected to deformationsdecade by decade’ (pp. 363–4). Nevertheless, we are once again faced with a

situation where the entire nineteenth-century corpus of sonata movements isalleged to contain a smattering of deformations of a norm that is actuallyabsent. Indeed, as the authors note with some disapproval, nineteenth-centurytheorists ignored Type 2 altogether; and Schumann actually interpreted thefirst movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique  (1830) as ‘a wide-archingwhole’, that is to say, a sonata form with a ‘reversed’ recapitulation (see pp.365 and 383).47 Tellingly, there is a whiff of the modern conspiracy theory tothe authors’ concluding historical summary of the Type 2 sonata:

Type 2 formats existed only under the radar of theoretical notice. Since they

were overlooked as viable late-eighteenth- and even nineteenth-century optionsamong the most influential theorists, they were largely absent, one presumes,from discussions of sonata form carried out within the emerging nineteenth-century academic institution of art music: universities, conservatories, critics,commentators, performers, theorists, historians, and so on. The Type 2 traditionwas kept alive – in memory and in aggressively original adaptations – primarilyas a little-used, alternative sonata practice among composers themselves.(p. 365)

The more pragmatic alternative is that nineteenth-century theorists neglectedthe Type 2 model simply because it was a historical curiosity at the time theywere writing. Perhaps, then, we should apply Occam’s razor to sonatacategorisation and conclude that the so-called Type 2 sonata was one of thecasualties of the ‘stylistic revolution of the 1770s’. Furthermore, if one takesthe logical step of accepting that Schumann (who after all was a composer and a critic and was presumably unencumbered by rotational fixations) mighthave been reflecting the  Zeitgeist   in describing an ‘arch’ form, the ‘reverse’recapitulation may legitimately be regarded as a potentially significant Type 3subcategory, at least as far as the nineteenth century is concerned.

Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s Type 4, the sonata rondo, is on the face of it more

puzzling than their Type 2. The prevailing view over the last two centuries has

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been that sonata form and rondo are distinct formal categories. Even whenrondos adopt aspects of sonata rhetoric, the particular structural emphasisaccorded to returns of the ‘tight-knit’ refrain (often a small ternary, roundedbinary or small binary structure) is deemed to be the defining rondo charac-teristic. In contrast, Hepokoski and Darcy give priority to the idea of circularreturn itself, espousing the view that rondo and sonata form are fundamentallyconnected through ‘dialogue with the rotational principle’ (p. 390). Thus theyview, for example, the commonly used ‘five-part rondo’ format as comprisingthree rotations: ‘AB–AC–A’ (p. 399). They promote the ‘quadri-rotational’sonata rondo to the status of a full subcategory of sonata form, because its firstrotation is ‘explicitly structured as the exposition of a sonata’ (p. 391) andbecause its third rotation functions like a recapitulation, with the materialoriginally stated in a non-tonic key transposed to the tonic. There are twomajor differences between the ‘expositional rotation’ of a sonata rondo and the

exposition of a sonata form: the former is never repeated and it concludes witha retransition preparing the return of the refrain. What happens in the secondrotation is less significant – this may be based on ‘expositional’ material or itmay be episodic. The ‘normative Type 3 sonata-rondo mixture’ (conventionallyABACAB1A coda) is summarised as follows (p. 405):

Rotation 1: Pref  TR ’ S / C RT (EEC in V or III)Rotation 2: Pref  development or episode RTRotation 3: Pref  TR ’ S / C RT (ESC in I or i)Rotation 4: Pref  + optional coda

The closely related ‘symmetrical seven-part rondo’ (AB–AC–AB1 –A) does not‘rise fully to the level of the “sonata-rondo” in the strictest sense’ (p. 404): eventhough B is in the dominant and B1 in the tonic, this pattern lacks a recognisableexpositional transition complete with medial caesura between A and B.Ultimately, then, in the world of Sonata Theory the difference between a rondoand a sonata rondo is potentially as small as the presence or absence of acouple of transitional passages.

The authors claim that their rotational approach finds ‘support in thewritings of two early-nineteenth-century theorists, Anton Reicha and Carl

Czerny’ (p. 390), who divide rondos respectively into ‘sections’ and ‘periods’according to returns of the refrain. They go on to contend that the insightfulrotational view ‘was apparently lost in the middle of the nineteenth century,perhaps as a result of A. B. Marx’s evolutionary view concerning his five rondotypes as progressive steps of the “spirit”, striving ultimately to attain the greatercohesiveness and “ternary” symmetry proved by sonata form’ (p. 392). Thestance taken by Marx is asserted to have been ‘perpetuated during theproduction of twentieth-century Formenlehre [sic]’. Once again, the implicationis that Hepokoski and Darcy have unearthed a hidden historical secret. Theirpresentation of nineteenth-century theorists’ ideas is, however, rather misleading.

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It is true, for instance, that in his chapter on the ‘Rondo or Finale’ in the School of Practical Composition  Czerny describes two main rondo layouts consistingrespectively of three and four ‘principal periods’ with optional coda:A(TR)B(RT)–AC(TR)–A and A(TR)B(RT)–AC(RT)–A(TR)B(RT)–A (inwhich the first B is in the dominant and the second in the tonic).48  But heexpresses the clear opinion that there is ‘a palpable difference’ between thecharacters of the main themes of sonatas and of rondos and that there is ‘asensible difference’ in the ‘construction’ of the two types of movement;49 andindeed, his essentially two-part conception of sonata form is remarkably free of rotational overtones.50 Evidently, the foregrounding of cyclical thematic returnis for Czerny the salient property of the rondo but not the sonata.51

Marx is also concerned with what distinguishes a sonata from a rondo. Hisessay ‘Die Form in der Musik’ (1856) regards the crucial distinction as lyingnot in a process of evolution, but rather in a fundamental difference of struc-

tural procedure. He observes that ‘we cannot fail to recognize a certain light-ness (if not to say looseness) in their character. They allow the main Satz  tofall away, only in order to bring it back again’. For Marx, in the sonata rondo,‘the second subsidiary Satz’ (equivalent to Sonata Theory’s second rotation)remains to an extent ‘foreign … no matter how happy an invention it may beand how suited to the rest [of the form]’.52  In contrast, sonata form gains ‘ahigher unity’ from the greater inter-connectedness of the second part with thefirst and third. He expounds further on this position in Volume 3 of DieLehre von der musikalischen Komposition, praktisch-theoretisch  (1845).53 Thedistinguishing feature of the rondo is ‘the motion-oriented alternation of 

thematic utterance (Satz) and transitional passage (Gang )’. Sonata form‘gives up the foreign element (the second subsidiary Satz)’, replacing it with asecond part that is ‘unified’ with the first and ‘made from the same content’.Also, whereas ‘in the rondo forms the main theme especially served as astationary touchpoint of the whole’, sonata form is not ‘satisfied to bring backsuch a Satz as if it were a dead possession, it enlivens it instead, lets it undergovariation and be repeated in different manners and with different destinations:it transforms the Satz  into an Other , which is nonetheless recognized as theoffspring of the first Satz and which stands in for it’. Furthermore, as observedabove, the second part ‘manifests itself primarily as the locus of varietyand motion … therefore the underlying pattern of sonata form is Ruhe-Bewegung -Ruhe’.54  Marx was clearly partly influenced in his thinking byBeethoven’s labelling of his finales. In particular, in his piano sonatasBeethoven reserves the ‘Rondo’ label for sonata-rondo formats where there isno clear demarcation of ‘S-space’ and ESC, and/or there is a central episodeinstead of a development.55

Evidently, Marx’s position is considerably more intricate than Hepokoskiand Darcy suggest. This is not to claim that Marx has all the answers: forexample, he apparently fails to account for the small number of development

sections, such as that of the Finale of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F minor,

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Op. 2 No. 1 (1793–5), which incorporate a substantial amount of new material.56

Nevertheless, his conviction that there is a higher-order difference between arondo and a sonata form involving much more than the presence of transitionalsections is worth pursuing. Caplin does precisely this in Classical Form, propos-ing a number of elements that distinguish the sonata rondo from the sonataproper.57 First, like Czerny and Marx, he maintains that ‘dramatic intensifica-tion in the rondo’ is primarily associated with the returns of the refrain.Second, he observes that refrains are usually more tightly knit than sonatathemes and tend to be conventional and symmetrical, closing with a perfectauthentic cadence. Additionally, ‘the tonal conflict of home and subordinatekeys – so often dramatized in sonata form – tends to be tempered in rondoforms’.58  Indeed, establishment of the subordinate key is often quite weakand subordinate themes in rondos are often relatively compressed andsimple in comparison with those in sonata movements, frequently dispensing

with a closing perfect authentic cadence (particularly in Beethoven). Moreover,the retransition leading back to the second refrain is ‘more elaborate thanthat at the end of a sonata exposition’ and ‘unlike a regular sonata, the codais a required element of sonata-rondo, because that section includes thefinal return of the main theme’.59 He further notes that fragmentary ‘wrong-key’ returns of the refrain are more common in rondos than are non-tonicrecapitulations in sonata-form movements: since ‘a rondo places itsdramatic emphasis on the return of the refrain, an initial appearance in the“wrong” key, corrected shortly thereafter in the right key, is a particularlyeffective device’.60

Caplin elaborates on some of these points with reference to the Finale of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 10 No. 3 in D major, which is marked ‘Rondo’by the composer, and which is put forward in Elements of Sonata Theory  as asomewhat eccentric deployment of ‘the standard Type 4 sonata’ (p. 407).61

Ex. 3 shows bars 1–24 of this movement, comprising the refrain (bars 1–8),the transition (bars 9–16) and the B section (bars 17–24). Caplin’s main con-tention is that the ‘extremely incomplete subordinate theme consists essentiallyof a weak initiating function (weak because the prolonged tonic is inverted)followed by a brief retransition’ and that as a result continuation and cadentialfunctions ‘are eliminated from the form’.62 Whilst they do not directly tacklethis issue, Hepokoski and Darcy do describe the ‘exposition’ as ‘disturbinglycompressed’, also noting additional quirky factors including the lack of an EECand ‘a radical deformation of what one expects to the be [sic] recapitulatoryrotation, which, in its fidgety tension, finds itself “unable” to reprise theoriginal S at all, much less in the tonic, and instead strays off into differingtonal areas, failing also in the process to secure an ESC’ (p. 407). The move-ment’s idiosyncrasies do not in fact end here. The refrain itself opens disarm-ingly with a I–IV progression in D that could initially be interpreted as V–I inG major and evades a clear cadence in the tonic until the start of the transition

(bar 9), which means that it is in an important sense preparatory, definitively

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establishing the tonic only at its close.63 The two principal retransitions are thusconcerned with stabilising the refrain’s opening: the first time, there is awrong-key attempt at restarting the theme (in F major) followed by an elaboratesequence and a tonal correction (bars 46–56);64 on the second occasion (bars72–83), the opening three-note motive is liquidated over a progression thatincorporates all three transpositions of the diminished seventh chord andconcludes with a lengthy dominant pedal.65  In short, the entire movement

centres on returns of the refrain to the exclusion of a clear ‘subordinate’ theme

Ex. 3 Beethoven, Piano Sonata in D, Op. 10 No. 3, Finale, bars 1–24

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movements – in which the exposition is not repeated and the development (andpossibly coda as well) begins with an (often incomplete) return of the maintheme, and which in all other respects observe orthodox sonata procedure (thelocus classicus  of this groundplan is the first movement of Beethoven’s StringQuartet in F major, Op. 59 No. 1 of 1806). Such ‘rondo sonata’ movementsare classified in Elements of Sonata Theory as Type 3 sonatas ‘with expositional-repeat feint’, since Type 4 sonatas are deemed to be ‘generically unavailable forfirst movements’ (p. 351). Tightening up the definition of sonata rondo alongCaplinesque lines would however have the advantage of rendering theproblematic concept of generic non-availability redundant in at least thisinstance. Naturally, there are still some movements that challenge any line of demarcation that one might be tempted to draw between rondo and sonata:the finales of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in Ew major, Op. 27 No. 1 of 1801 (forwhich Beethoven avoids the title ‘Rondo’) and Mendelssohn’s Piano Sonata in

B w  major, Op. 106 (1827), for example. Both of these movements mightplausibly be analysed as a rondo or a sonata and, interestingly, both are furthercomplicated by a substantial return of material from an earlier movement.Tovey was in fact disconcerted enough by the former to classify it as a ‘Rondo,with Development in place of Second Episode’.66

The Neologising Impulse

The inclusion in its sonata-form typology of two categories not normallysingled out for separate classification reflects a central tendency in Elements of 

Sonata Theory that might be termed its ‘neologising impulse’. A number of thebook’s neologisms are persuasive: for instance, the ‘grand antecedent’, ‘alengthy, often multimodular antecedent phrase’ (p. 77) and ‘grand consequent’,as well as a variant of the sentence labelled the ‘loop’, in which ‘a short module… is either elided or flush-juxtaposed with a repetition of itself before movingforward into different material’ (p. 80). But, as I have consistently suggested,in many cases the authors’ suspicion of existing vocabulary and conceptsspawns new terminology and theoretical formulations that are not an obviousimprovement and are in many cases unnecessary.

A particularly clear-cut example of this is the division into ‘two-part’ and‘continuous’ expositions, depending on whether or not there is a clear medialcaesura before the onset of ‘S-space’. This distinction is set up contra Tovey,Rosen et al , who essentially view the exposition as embodying a tonal dramaand are not so particular about precisely where the opposing non-tonic key isconsolidated, whether this occurs at the start of the secondary material orduring the closing section. Hepokoski and Darcy are surprisingly inflexibleabout their distinction: ‘If there is no medial caesura there is no second theme’(p. 52). Of course, there are many movements with supposedly ‘continuous’expositions that contain what appears in rhetorical terms to be an incontrovertible

secondary theme despite the lack of a medial caesura, a choice of layout that

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became increasingly common in the nineteenth century. The first movement of Mendelssohn’s Cello Sonata No. 1 in B w  (1838) is one particularly strikingexample amongst many: here, the second theme begins at bar 61 over a diminishedseventh and a clear cadence in the dominant is deferred until bar 100, wherethe closing section begins with a variant of the opening theme. Sonata Theory’sapproach to such movements is to accord priority to tonal organisation andposit that the apparent secondary theme is deceptive or even calculatedlydeficient in one or more respects (pp. 51–64).

Hepokoski and Darcy even go so far as to identify elaborate dialoguesbetween the two exposition types in some works, notably in the first movementof Mozart’s String Quartet in D minor, K. 421 (1783), which despite itsseemingly ‘clear two-part exposition’ displays ‘ravishingly clever ambiguity’ bybeing ‘poised between the two exposition types – and partaking of both’(p. 63). But since readers are later informed that in the eighteenth and nine-

teenth centuries ‘theorists … persistently ignored the continuous-expositionformat’ (p. 118), how are they to avoid concluding that Mozart is allegedlyconducting a dialogue with a structural model invented in the late twentiethcentury? And what are readers to make of the fact that here tonal concernsseem to be paramount, whereas on other occasions – for instance at timeswhen recapitulations are posited to begin in non-tonic keys (see pp. 260–79) – thematic elements are privileged? Matters are made worse by analyses of specific works that do not fit easily within the established parameters. The firstmovement of Mozart’s String Quintet in G minor, K. 516 (1787), is subjectedto an especially perplexing interpretation (p. 29), in which the transition is

asserted to begin as early as bar 9 and to conclude at bar 29 with a perfectauthentic cadence in G minor, whereupon the secondary theme is understoodto begin, still in the tonic, at bar 30. This is all despite the fact that the relativemajor is not unequivocally confirmed until bar 64. Here the movement hasbeen classified as a ‘two-part’ exposition mainly on the basis of thematic ratherthan tonal factors; but the idea that the perfect cadence at bar 29 functions asa ‘medial caesura’ rather than a conclusion to the first theme is fundamentallyunconvincing. Unfortunately, then, both the concepts of the ‘continuous’ and‘two-part’ expositions and the manner in which they are deployed analyticallyunderline the book’s confusingly informal approach to the relationship between‘rhetorical form’ and ‘tonal form’. A more productive strategy might be todispense with the distinction between types of exposition and simply posit thata non-tonic key is normally conclusively tonicised at some point from the endof the transition onwards, which of course brings us back to the notion of tonalpolarity propounded by Rosen and others.

Another highly self-conscious use of neologism occurs in Sonata Theory’snormative model for the internal structure of ‘developmental space’. Caplin,following Erwin Ratz, proposes a tripartite scheme of ‘pre-core, core andretransition’ that does seem to underpin a significant proportion of both

eighteenth- and nineteenth-century development sections.67

  Hepokoski and

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Darcy forcefully reject this, advocating instead a model of ‘four zones … notall of which need be deployed in any given work’: a ‘short, optional link’; the‘entry  or  preparatory zone’; the ‘central action  or set of actions’; and the ‘exit   ortransition’ (pp. 229–30). The only salient difference between this and Caplin’smodel is the subdivision of the ‘pre-core’ into ‘link’ and ‘preparatory zone’, andthe former is in any case declared to be ‘optional’. Moreover, one reads in thecourse of the same chapter: ‘Because there are so many exceptions andindividual treatments, it has always been difficult to generalize about devel-opments’ (p. 206). The new terminology thus adds little to existing thoughton developments and one wonders whether the hostile rhetoric directed atCaplin’s model (which is described as ‘underdeveloped’) is really necessary. Inthe light of all this, it is a relief that the authors decide not to take up some of their own neologisms: ‘post-P continuation modules’ is suggested as areplacement for the conventional and serviceable ‘transition’ (p. 94), for

example, but it is not utilised further in the book.Caplin’s ideas are in fact targeted for sustained critique on a broad range of fronts throughout Elements of Sonata Theory. Another area of disagreementconcerns the placing of the exposition’s definitive non-tonic cadence. Hepokoskiand Darcy, following William Rothstein, devise what they term the ‘first-PACrule’:68 in a sonata movement the EEC is deemed to take place ‘after the onsetof the secondary theme, on the attainment of the first satisfactory perfectauthentic cadence that proceeds onward to differing material’ (p. 120).Caplin’s contrasting view is that the final perfect authentic cadence of the‘subordinate-theme group’ is the definitive one, leading to a ‘closing group’

with a ‘postcadential function’ and a ‘general sense of compression of musicalmaterial’.69 This at first seems like a straightforward difference of opinion, butHepokoski’s and Darcy’s stance is rapidly modified on contact with the actualrepertoire. Much of their Chapter 8 (‘S-Complications’) is devoted to situ-ations where the EEC might be deferred: ‘retrospective reopenings of the firstPAC’ in ‘S-space’, the ‘re-launching’ of S after the apparent onset of C-space,and so on. The symbol ‘Sc’ is even devised to deal with situations where theclosing material seems to ‘take on the EEC-burden of S’ (p. 191). Theiranalysis of the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in F major, K. 332(1781–3), posits an EEC-deferral sequence lasting 30 bars – nearly a third of the entire exposition (pp. 159–62). Thus in practice their position frequentlydraws so close to that of Caplin that the reader is once again surprised by boththe categorical nature of their initial pronouncement and the vehemence withwhich it is expressed.

Other relatively small differences with Caplin – such as whether the‘dominant lock’ that often concludes transitions might best be deemed‘post-cadential’ (Caplin’s preference) or as keeping the point of cadential ‘arrivalalive’ (Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s view) – are laboured at length and repeatedmore than once (see the footnotes to pp. 28, 31 and 39 on this issue). One

cannot escape the impression that there is a Bloomian sense of belatedness

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three concluding chapters on Mozart’s concertos are a tour de force in theirsynthesis of existing ideas and new perspectives, and unquestionably con-stitute a major contribution to Mozart studies in general. The book alsocontains valuable bonus material lying outside its central remit, such asthe extremely useful section on key choice and movement patterns in‘three- and four-movement sonata cycles’ (Chapter 15). Moreover, itsexaminations of many important and previously under-examined issuessupplementary to the main theoretical arena – ‘repetition schemes’ (pp. 20–2)and the ‘extra burden of minor-mode sonatas’ (pp. 306–10), to name but two – are highly informative.

As far as the core theory is concerned, despite its problematic elements,there are aspects that indisputably provide significant new insights. Inaccording full recognition to the ritornello/sonata hybrid Type 5, Hepokoskiand Darcy open up a whole range of analytical possibilities previously impeded

by the tendency of earlier sonata thinking to subsume concerto-sonataadaptations within other broader sonata categories. Similarly, one result of thegoal-directed cast of the Essential Sonata Trajectory and its concomitantemphasis on the TR, S and C spaces is a valuable corrective to the tendencyin many earlier writings on sonata form to privilege the primary material. If the assertion that the nature of S ‘makes a sonata a sonata’ (p. 117) is perhapsoverstated, it nonetheless certainly necessitates a radical reappraisal of long-standing analytical methodologies. Most of all, the technical rigour withwhich Hepokoski and Darcy have tackled their project has raised the bar forsubsequent theoretical forays into the sonata-form sphere.

What, then, are the consequences of all this for any intended future studyof sonata form? As regards structure, it seems clear that an alternative basicmodel to Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s ‘generic layout’ is called for. The authors’theories about the function and make-up of ‘S-space’ notwithstanding, moredetailed attention now needs to be paid to the differing roles of primary andsecondary material and to the way the two interact, areas that Sonata Theoryunderplays. This in turn suggests that more equal emphasis must be given tothe front-weighted as well as the goal-directed aspects of sonata form. As faras developments and recapitulations are concerned, more flexible approachesthat are less reliant on the rotational metaphor are required. On the smallerscale, a theory of how sonatas work at the ‘modular’ level seems vital (asconsidered above, Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s approach to this dimension issomewhat informal). Moreover, contra  Sonata Theory’s preoccupation withtonal factors, the role of thematic and motivic process needs to be worked fullyinto the equation. Finally, a new sonata model will have to be flexible enoughto accommodate the overwhelming predominance, from the second quarter of the nineteenth century onwards, of characteristics that are exceptional in orabsent from earlier sonata movements: expositions that do not reach anunequivocal cadence in a secondary key, recapitulations that begin over a

dominant pedal, end-directed tonal structures, and so forth.

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The obvious starting point for a model along these lines is of course Caplin.Hepokoski and Darcy optimistically imply that they have superseded Caplin’sideas, but in fact Sonata Theory’s ‘generic layout’ has least to offer in thedomains where Caplin provides the greatest explanatory force. In particular,Caplin’s distinctions between ‘tight-knit’ and ‘loose-knit’ material, and betweenpresentational, continuing and concluding functions, could form the basis of agenerative sonata model. Such a model might incorporate both Hepokoski’sand Darcy’s insights into large-scale structure and the work done by CarlDahlhaus, Walter Frisch, Janet Schmalfeldt and others on thematic process (asCaplin acknowledges, his theory, despite its Schoenbergian roots, sidelinesSchoenberg’s concept of ‘developing variation’).70

Constructing an alternative sonata model will also involve shelving SonataTheory’s concepts of the ‘genre sonata’ and ‘deformation’, and this will in turnnecessitate greater historical nuance. In the late eighteenth century, a particular

sonata movement was formed not in dialogue with a ‘generic layout’ theorisedin the late twentieth century, but through creative engagement with syntacticalconventions governed by a common style. The musical landscape changedmarkedly in the early nineteenth century owing to the emerging consciousnessof an ‘anterior corpus’ of works (Julia Kristeva’s term), with which composersinteracted to produce their own individual conceptions of form, tonality,material process and so on.71  As an initial step towards incorporating thisdecisive shift into a sonata-theoretical model, a systematic and more compre-hensive investigation of the repertoire is required. This preliminary statisticalsurvey will need to be much more even-handed in its coverage of what are

now deemed to be the ‘mainstream’ and ‘peripheral’ repertoires: a twenty-first-century view of the late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century sonatacanon is not congruent with that outlined in earlier theoretical texts such asCzerny’s School of Practical Composition, so it is problematic to posit ‘norms’and exceptions exclusively on the basis of current values. The statistical surveywill also need to identify variations of sonata procedure between genres. To takean obvious example, in the early nineteenth century substantially truncatedrecapitulations seem to be much more common in concertos than in othertypes of work.

Once a large representative sample of works has been assembled, it is alsoimportant to recognise the limitations of the statistical evidence. One canquantify frequencies of occurrence of particular procedures according to genre,chronology, geographical location and so on; but drawing up hierarchies of ‘defaults’ on the basis of such basic statistical analysis is a questionable enterprise,because it tells us nothing about the unique network of connections surroundinga particular work. Every nineteenth-century sonata movement is to animportant extent the product of a composer’s pedagogical experience,knowledge of the repertoire and theoretical opinions, and of the ways in whichthat composer’s practice interconnects with all three of these. Sometimes

investigating the intertextual web surrounding individual pieces can produce

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surprising results: Schumann’s and Mendelssohn’s concertos exhibit a wealthof cross-references with the concertos of Weber, Field, Herz, Moscheles andKalkbrenner but display relatively few points of contact with those of Mozartand Beethoven.72  A related complication is that many works that were highlyinfluential in the nineteenth century were not by any stretches of the imagination‘normative’: Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony and ‘Appassionata’ Sonata are twoof the most obvious examples.

In short, the immediate way forward may be a detailed empirical, composer-by-composer study of the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century repertoire andthorough scrutiny of channels of reception as revealed in the interrelationshipof individual practices and compositional precedents. From this perspective,Elements of Sonata Theory  constitutes an imposing examination of sonataprocedures in Mozart especially, setting challenging standards for otherinvestigations of individual composers’ outputs. The book thus seems set to

exert a considerable influence on the field for many years to come.

NOTES

1. James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York and Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2006). xxix + 661 pp. £45.00. ISBN 0-19-514640-9 (hb).

2. See, for example, the following: James Hepokoski, ‘Fiery Pulsed Libertine orDomestic Hero? Strauss’s Don Juan  Reinvestigated’, in Bryan Gilliam (ed.),Richard Strauss: New Perspectives on the Composer and his Work  (Durham, NC:

Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 135–75; James Hepokoski, Sibelius: Symphonyno. 5  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 5–9 and 19–30; JamesHepokoski and Warren Darcy, ‘The Medial Caesura and its Role in the Eighteenth-Century Sonata Exposition’,  Music Theory Spectrum, 19 (1997), pp. 115–54;Warren Darcy, ‘Bruckner’s Sonata Deformations’, in Timothy L. Jackson andPaul Hawkshaw (eds.), Bruckner Studies  (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1997), pp. 256–77; James Hepokoski, ‘Back and Forth from Egmont :Beethoven, Mozart and the Nonresolving Recapitulation’, 19th-Century Music, 25(2002), pp. 127–53; James Hepokoski, ‘Beyond the Sonata Principle’,  Journal of the American Musicological Society, 55 (2002), pp. 91–154; James Hepokoski,‘Beethoven Reception: The Symphonic Tradition’, in Jim Samson (ed.), The

Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music  (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 2002), pp. 424–59; and James Hepokoski, ‘Framing Till Eulenspiegel’,19th-Century Music, 30 (2006), pp. 4–43.

3. William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental  Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York and Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1998).

4. Edward T. Cone,  Musical Form and Musical Performance  (New York: Norton,1968); Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (London:Faber and Faber, 1971), 2nd rev. edn (New York: Norton, 1997); Mark EvanBonds, Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 13–52.

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5. Although Schenker is a major influence on many aspects of Hepokoski’s andDarcy’s approach to tonal structure, in Elements of Sonata Theory  relatively littlespace is allocated to elaborating the links between Sonata Theory and Schenker’sideas. The most substantial passage on the topic (pp. 147–9) comes at the end of Chapter 7 – ‘The Secondary Theme (S) and Essential Expositional Closure

(EEC)’ – and this raises rather more questions than it answers.6. On returning to Elements of Sonata Theory after a break between Chapter 7 and

Chapter 8 (entitled ‘S-Complications’), I had the strong impression of errone-ously picking up a medical textbook and was reminded in reverse of DavidLodge’s fictional ‘bibliographer specializing in the history of punctuation’ who satthrough ‘the first twenty minutes of a medical paper on “Malfunctions of theColon” before he realised his mistake’. See Small World  (London: Martin Seckerand Warburg, 1984), p. 233.

7. This total includes only movements that refer to one of Hepokoski’s and Darcy’sfive types and about which at least one substantive analytical point is made in the

text.8. Leon Plantinga, Clementi: His Life and Music  (New York and Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1977).

9. Plantinga, Clementi: His Life and Music, p. 180.

10. Julian Horton, ‘Field and the Piano Concerto’ (paper presented at the ‘Workshopon Sonata Form in the Early Nineteenth Century’, University College Dublin,March 2008). For a more general consideration of these trends, see StephanLindeman, Structural Novelty and Tradition in the Early Romantic Piano Concerto(Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1999), especially pp. 7–42.

11. Julian Horton, ‘Sonata Form as Reception History: John Field’s Piano ConcertoNo. 7 and Schumann’s Piano Concerto Op. 54’ (paper presented at the SixthEuropean Music Analysis Conference, Freiburg, October 2007).

12. Joseph Kerman, ‘Beethoven’s Minority’, in Write All These Down: Essays on Music(Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 217–37.

13. See Hepokoski, ‘Back and Forth from Egmont ’, especially pp. 127–36.

14. Paul Wingfield, ‘Clementi’s Minor-Mode Sonata Strategies’ (paper presented atthe Sixth European Music Analysis Conference, Freiburg, October 2007).

15. I am most grateful to my colleague Dr Joan Lasenby of Trinity College,Cambridge and the Cambridge University Engineering Department for explainingto me in detail the mathematical uses of the terms ‘vector’ and ‘rotation’.

16. Donald Francis Tovey,  A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas  (London:The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 1931), pp. 24–5.

17. Daniel Chua,  Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning  (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1999), pp. 199–208 and especially pp. 205–6.

18. Leo Treitler, ‘Mozart and the Idea of Absolute Music’, in Music and the Historical Imagination  (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 176–214.

19. John Frow, Genre (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).

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20. Frow, Genre, p. 9.

21. Frow, Genre, pp. 24–5.

22. As advanced in James Hepokoski, ‘Sonata Theory and Dialogic Form’ (paperpresented at the Sixth European Music Analysis Conference, Freiburg, October

2007). His reading of The Ruins of Athens as a ‘deformed’ Type 3 sonata, whoseunusual properties include secondary and closing material in the subdominantand the omission of S and C from the recapitulation, provoked considerabledebate. During discussion Hepokoski pronounced the more obvious ternaryinterpretation favoured by delegates to be ‘generically unavailable’ for an overturecomposed in 1811.

23. See the following: Robert Schumann, ‘A Symphony by Hector Berlioz’, inEdward T. Cone (ed.), Berlioz: Fantastic Symphony (New York: Norton, 1971), pp.220–48; Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms, 2nd rev. edn (New York: Norton, 1988),pp. 144–5; and Timothy L. Jackson, ‘The Finale of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony

and the Tragic Reversed Sonata Form’, in Bruckner Studies, pp. 140–208.24. The two pertinent texts are Anton Reicha, Traité de haute composition musicale,

Vol. 2 (Paris: Zetter, 1826) and Carl Czerny, School of Practical Composition,trans. John Bishop, vol. 1 (London: Cocks, c. 1848).

25. A. B. Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven: Selected Writings on Theory and  Method , ed. and trans. Scott Burnham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1997), p. 168.

26. Caplin, Classical Form, p. 139.

27. The eight Clementi movements in question are: the first movements of the piano

sonatas Op. 10 No. 1 in A major (1783), Op. 10 No. 3 in Bw major (1783), Op.13 No. 4 in Bw major (1785), Op. 16 in D major (1786), Op. 23 No. 3 in E w major(1790) and Op. 25 No. 3 in Bw major (1790); and the finales of the piano sonatasOp. 10 No. 2 in D major (1783) and Op. 13 No. 5 in F major (1785; revised1810).

28. See in particular Joseph N. Straus, ‘Normalizing the Abnormal: Disability inMusic and Music Theory’,  Journal of the American Musicological Society, 59(2006), pp. 113–84; and Julian Horton, ‘Bruckner’s Symphonies and SonataDeformation Theory’,  Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland , 1 (2005),pp. 1–13.

29. Straus, ‘Normalizing the Abnormal’, pp. 130–1.

30. Straus, ‘Normalizing the Abnormal’, pp. 126–9.

31. See n. 24 above for details of Reicha’s and Czerny’s principal texts; A. B. Marx’smain work is Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, praktisch-theoretisch,vols. 1–4 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1837–47), and Ernst Richter’s keytext is Die Grundzüge der musikalischen Formen und ihre Analyse  (Leipzig: GeorgWigand, 1852).

32. Paul Wingfield and Julian Horton, ‘Norm and Deformation in Mendelssohn’sSonata Forms’, in Jacqueline Waeber and Nicole Grimes (eds.),  Mendelssohn in

the Long Nineteenth Century  (Aldershot: Ashgate, in press).

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33. James Webster, ‘Sonata Form’, in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (eds.), The NewGrove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 2001),Vol. 23, pp. 687–701; this quotation p. 693.

34. Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms, pp. 97, 144–5, 286–7 and 322–3.

35. Eugene K. Wolf, ‘Sonata Form’, in Don Michael Randall (ed.), The Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th edn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003),pp. 799–802; this quotation, p. 801.

36. Rosen, Sonata Forms, p. 161.

37. The sixteen movements in question are: the overtures to Apollo et Hyacinthus, K.38 (1767), and Il re pastore, K. 208 (1775); the first movements of symphoniesNo. 1 in Ew, K. 16 (1764–5), No. 4 in D, K. 19/i (1765), No. 5 in Bw, K. 22/i(1765), No. 6 in F, K. 43 (1767), and No. 20 in D, K. 133 (1772); the firstmovements of the Piano Sonatas in Ew, K. 282 (1775), and D, K. 311 (1777),and of the Violin Sonata in D, K. 306 (1777); the slow movements of the String

Quartet, K. 155 (1772), and the Flute Quartet in G, K. 285a (1778); and thefinales of the Symphony No. 11 in D, K. 84 (1770), of two unnumbered sym-phonies in D, K. 81 (1770) and K. 95 (1770), and of Eine kleine Nachtmusik,K. 525 (1787). See pp. 362 and 372.

38. The last Type 2a piano-sonata movement by Clementi is the Finale of Op. 20 inC (published 1787); other examples are rare in works published after 1780.

39. The recapitulations of the following additional Clementi minor-mode move-ments contain substantial passages in the submediant major: the first movementsof Op. 7 No. 3 (1782), Op. 34 No. 2 (1795) and Op. 50 No. 3 (published1821); the Finale of Op. 50 No. 3; and Gradus ad Parnassum No. 44 (published

1819).

40. For an interpretation of the Quartettsatz as a Type 2 variant see Martin Chusid,‘Schubert’s Chamber Music: Before and After Beethoven’, in Christopher H.Gibbs (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Schubert   (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997), pp. 174–92; see especially pp. 178–9.

41. Robert Pascall, ‘Some Special Uses of Sonata Form by Brahms’, Soundings, 4(1974), pp. 58–63.

42. Edward Aldwell and Carl Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading , 2nd edn (NewYork: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), p. 572.

43. Timothy L. Jackson, ‘Aspects of Sexuality and Structure in the Later Symphoniesof Tchaikovsky’, Music Analysis, 14 (1995), pp. 3–25; see especially pp. 7–9.

44. This issue is examined in detail in Paul Wingfield and Julian Horton, ‘Norm andDeformation in Mendelssohn’s Sonata Forms’.

45. The term ‘multi-movement form within a single movement’ is in fact Hepokoski’sand he cites Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 as a seminal example; see Hepokoski,Sibelius: Symphony no. 5 , p. 7. For an extensive consideration of ‘two-dimensional’or ‘double-function’ form see Steven vande Moortele, ‘Two-Dimensional SonataForm in Germany and Austria between 1850 and 1950: Theoretical, Analytical,

and Critical Perspectives’ (PhD diss., University of Leuven, 2006).

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46. Steven vande Moortele, ‘Form, Program, and Deformation in Liszt’s Hamlet ’,Dutch Journal of Music Theory, 11 (2006), pp. 71–82; see especially p. 74, n. 16.

47. Schumann, ‘A Symphony by Hector Berlioz’, pp. 230–1.

48. Czerny, School of Practical Composition, vol. 1, pp. 69–75.

49. Czerny, School of Practical Composition, vol. 1, p. 69.

50. Czerny, School of Practical Composition, vol. 1, pp. 33–7.

51. Czerny, School of Practical Composition, vol. 1, p. 69.

52. Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven, pp. 55–90; this quotation p. 82.

53. Selected excerpts from the fourth edition (1868) are translated in  Musical Formin the Age of Beethoven, pp. 91–154; see especially pp. 91–5.

54. Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven, p. 95.

55. The finales of the following Beethoven sonatas are designated as rondos: Op. 2No. 2 in A major (1794–5); Op. 7 in Ew major (1796–7); Op. 10 No. 3 in D major(1797–8); Op. 13 in C minor (1797–8); Op 14 No. 1 in E major (1798); Op. 22in Bw major (1800); Op. 28 in D major (1801); Op. 31 No. 1 in G major (1802);Op. 49 No. 1 in G minor (1797?); and Op. 53 in C major (1803–4). All but thelast two belong to the Type 4 sonata category according to Hepokoski’s andDarcy’s taxonomic criteria.

56. Although even this movement contains some conventional developmental activity:the theme in Aw  major at bar 59 is ostensibly new, but the latter stages of thedevelopment involve (from bar 109) concentrated working of the Hauptmotiv  of the primary theme that continues throughout the retransition (bars 127–137).

57. See Caplin, Classical Form, pp. 235–41.

58. Caplin, Classical Form, p. 237.

59. Caplin, Classical Form, p. 235.

60. Caplin, Classical Form, p. 238.

61. Caplin, Classical Form, pp. 236–7.

62. Caplin, Classical Form, p. 237.

63. Tonally unstable rondo themes or rondo themes beginning in the wrong key are

relatively common in Beethoven’s works: off-tonic examples include the finales of the String Quartet, Op. 59 No. 2 in E minor (1806), and the Piano ConcertoNo. 4 in G major, Op. 58 (1804–7). On this matter, see L. Poundie Burstein,‘The Off-Tonic Return in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major andOther Works’, Music Analysis, 24/iii (2005), pp. 305–47.

64. Oddly, Hepokoski and Darcy identify the ‘wrong’ key here as Bw major instead of F (p. 407).

65. The careful planning behind the deployment of diminished chords in this move-ment is also a characteristic of the sonata’s slow movement: see ChristopherWintle, ‘Kontra-Schenker: Largo e mesto from Beethoven’s Op. 10 No. 3’,  Music

 Analysis, 4 (1985), pp. 145–82.

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66. Tovey, A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, pp. 100–3.

67. See Caplin, Classical Form, pp. 139–59 and Erwin Ratz, Einführung in der musikal-ische Formenlehre: Über Formprinzipien in den Inventionen und Fugen J. S. Bachs und ihre Bedeutung für die Kompositionstechnik Beethovens  (Vienna: ÖsterreichischerBundesverlag, 1951), p. 33. As Caplin explains, he refines and adapts Ratz’sideas.

68. William Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music (New York: Schirmer, 1989),pp. 116–17.

69. Caplin, Classical Form, pp. 121–2.

70. See, for example: Carl Dahlhaus,  Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. BradfordRobinson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1989),pp. 13–15 and ‘Zur Formidee in Beethovens d-moll-Sonate opus 31, 2’, Die

 Musikforschung , 33 (1980), pp. 310–12; Janet Schmalfeldt, ‘Form as the Processof Becoming: The Beethoven-Hegelian Tradition and “Tempest” Sonata’,

Beethoven Forum, 4 (1996), pp. 37–71; and Walter Frisch, Brahms and the Principleof Developing Variation  (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of CaliforniaPress, 1990).

71. See Julia Kristeva, ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, in Toril Moi (ed.), The KristevaReader  (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 34–61.

72. Horton, ‘Sonata Form as Reception History’; see also n. 10.