Implications of Thematic Reuse in Haydn's Sonata Forms

Haydn’s ‘recomposition’ of the recapitulation is well known, but this article proposes, against received wisdom, that Haydn composed as though following a rule in the recapitulations of fast sonata-form movements from the 1770s onwards. The article extends William E. Caplin’s functional theory to the Haydn recapitulation in order to revive the ‘sonata principle’, restated and limited to fast movements in Haydn’s instrumental cycles. It then lays out a typology of Haydn’s recapitulatory strategies that unfold within the constraints of the sonata principle.

2019

This thesis offers a new approach to the study of the coda in one of the most familiar topics in the field of music: the study of sonata form in the works of Haydn, Mozart and Bee-thoven. As with all fresh approaches, it draws from several current works on this subject, whilst also providing new views on the coda and approaches to multi-movement and multi-work analysis. In addition to considering the study of the coda using a prototype-statistical methodology, this thesis provides a foundation for examining works and genres by composers beyond the thesis sample. From one perspective, this thesis is a research report outlining the findings from the analysis of 333 individual sonata-allegro and sonata-rondo movements by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. However, this work does not only represent a significant analytical undertaking: it also identifies patterns in the composition of the coda, establishing generalisations previously thought not to exist. Although the theoretical discussion o...

Ad Parnassum: A Journal of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music, 2017

In Classical Form, William Caplin discusses the deceptive cadence as a courtesy to the theoretical community, since the term has a centuries-long pedigree. However, Caplin disqualifies such closing gestures as being true cadences, in the form-articulating sense of the term. In this article, I propose a similar exclusion of the imperfect authentic cadence (IAC) as a cadence type in Classical music: rather, like the deceptive cadence, the IAC is often best understood as a category of cadential evasion. As such, it can mark an intermediate stage of a theme by punctuating an initiating gesture, or by emphasizing harmonically (though not cadentially) the endpoint of a prolongational segment. I will illustrate the advantages of downplaying the IAC when dealing with anomalous thematic designs of the mid-18th century, through analysis of main themes in certain early keyboard works by Haydn (including his sonatas XVI: 18, 19 and 46). Following Galant practices, such works often employ Prinner schemata in their opening phrases (scale degree 6-5-4-3 soprano, 4-3-2-[5]-1 bass), as per Robert Gjerdingen’s terminology, which are fundamentally prolongational; or display an apparent IAC-HC (half cadence) design (James Webster’s “antiperiod”). By declassifying the IAC as a cadence type, such themes can be analyzed as hybrid thematic structures, or as the presentation phrase of an expanded sentence that encompasses both main theme and transition; thus often simplifying the discernment of a sonata exposition’s formal boundaries, particularly in these challenging works from Haydn’s early maturity.

Theory and Practice , 2004

Sonata form--the analytical brainchild of Antonin Reicha and Carl Czerny in the first quarter of the nineteenth century--remains today a problematic paradigm. The inadequacy of the "textbook" model to explain the musical choices of especially Haydn and Beethoven is evident whenever one examines their sonata-form compositions. Consequently, writers from Donald Francis Tovey to William S. Newman and Charles Rosen have sounded various cautionary notes concerning this model, and have inspired others in recent times to search for new, more flexible means of describing how Classical sonata form functions musically. The past few years have witnessed the appearance of two analytical approaches that can assist us in the quest. First, there is William Caplin's taxonomy of Classical instrumental music at the level of the four-measure phrase and the two-measure phrase member. It provides us with the technical means to identify thematic and transitional units and to distinguish between them on the basis of their syntactical components. Second, there is James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy's identification of breaks in musical action (i.e., medial caesuras and essential expositional closures) as analogues to punctuation in language, which they use to demarcate formal events in sonata expositions. Both approaches draw heavily on historical views of musical form: Caplin's ideas about formal function derive from Schoenberg and Ratz; Hepokoski and Darcy's interest in musical breaks as large-scale formal determinants is an extension of Heinrich Christoph Koch's concept of "melodic punctuation." Hepokoski and Darcy suggest a rather wide-but nonetheless distinct-range of possible temporal locations, within a sonata-form exposition, for each type of melodic punctuation. Their data suggests that the temporality of musical events is more integral to a listener's perception of musical succession than has been hitherto assumed. Indeed, it could be argued that the musical proportion of an exposition's formal components (i.e., main theme, transition, subordinate theme, closing section) influences subconsciously how we formally partition a sonata exposition, regardless of the literal form-functional meaning of each expositional segment, as determined by Caplin.

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America, 2014

In 1963, Jens Peter Larsen published an article entitled "Sonata Form Problems," in which he outlines some of Haydn's unique solutions to sonata-exposition structures. Using Larsen's hypotheses, coupled with William Caplin's insights in Classical Form, and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy's groundbreaking Elements of Sonata Theory, I will examine the diversity of Haydn's formal procedures in certain movements of his oft-neglected Opus 17 string quartets of 1771. These works provide a staggering array of sonata-form possibilities, many of which deviate provocatively from the High Classical sonata form model. In a brief overview of the Opus 17 quartets' 17 sonata-form movements (presented in tabular form), we will explore the diversity of Haydn's formal procedures. Four of James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy's five sonata-form "types" (from their Elements of Sonata Theory) are employed in Opus 17: Type 1 sonatas (which lack a development section), Type 2 sonatas (which omit the main theme from the recapitulation), Type 3 sonatas (the "textbook" form), and Type 4 sonatas (a sonata-rondo blend). Following this overview, we will turn in depth to three specific movements from this opus: the slow movements of Opus 17, nos. 1 and 3, and the sonata-rondo finale of Opus 17, no. 1. In these works, Haydn's fondness for anomalous thematic structures will be explored and examined as viable alternatives to normative sonata-form design. Haydn's formal inventiveness in his Opus 17 quartets strongly suggests that he was not seeking to problematize sonata form, but rather, positing a wide range of solutions for the balance of thematic and developmental activity in these works.

Theory and Practice, 2019

Ever since William Caplin inducted Schoenberg's notion of a sentence (Satz) into English-language theoretical discourse, scholars have been codifying the myriad guises that sentences can assume. One guise, however, that has not been sufficiently explained is what I call-after James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, who discuss it only briefly-a "breakout" sentence. Here, a presentation module is followed by a continuation module that retrospectively becomes a new presentation, thus triggering a new sentence. The opening of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik is a paradigmatic example. Classical composers exploit this sentence type in order to enter into a primary theme, less often a secondary theme, in a fluid, processive way. This essay will survey examples of such themes. In addition, it will demonstrate how periods can arise retrospectively, and how both sentences and periods can "break out" not only from presentation modules but also from compound basic ideas and from what James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy call "Mozartian loops." All of these formal phenomena provide object lessons in how the three currently most pervasive Formenlehren-Caplin's form-functional theory, Hepokoski and Darcy's Sonata Theory, and Janet Schmalfeldt's theory of formal becoming-can and indeed must work together to elucidate certain formal occurrences.

Haydn: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America 3.2 (2013), 35 pages

In his classic article “Sonata Form Problems” Jens Peter Larsen warned of analytic pitfalls that result from the reliance on anachronistic models of musical form. The modern tradition of taking “textbook sonata form as the starting point,” as he put it with disarming simplicity, often “invites difficulties” in the analysis of Haydn’s sonata forms. This article follows up Larsen’s essay by reconsidering some perceived formal difficulties in Haydn’s symphonies that arise from mismatches between Haydn’s practice and modern expectations. Specifically, it explores ways in which Haydn's symphonies do things that according to the “textbook” are not supposed to happen in sonata form. The first of these involves appearances of the tonic during the development section, which have been termed "medial tonic returns.” The second involves the clear statement of primary theme material in a non-tonic key before the decisive tonic return that initiates the recapitulation proper, which are here dubbed “medial thematic returns.” Both of these formal procedures are commonly discussed as part of the problematic of the so-called “false recapitulation.” The advantages and disadvantages of this concept as a tool for musical analysis have been well-rehearsed by now. By separating the two components of this device—the seemingly preemptory recurrence of the tonic and of the main theme—this article clarifies the analytic problem and shows how a more historical sense of formal process reveals important yet overlooked aspects of Haydn’s evolving approach to symphonic form during his two decades as Prince Esterhazy’s resident symphonist.

False recapitulations are often cited as a hallmark of Joseph Haydn’s sonata-form style, exemplifying perhaps better than any other technique the composer’s witty and subversive engagement with formal conventions. However, closer scrutiny reveals that the concept of false recapitulation is based on a number of different, partially incompatible cognitive, intentional, theoretical, and historical criteria. In an attempt to reconstruct the horizon of expectations of historical listeners, I shall essentially draw on two sources: the compositional practice of the time as reflected in a preliminary repertoire study and contemporaneous theoretical writings. In a nutshell, I shall argue that the analytical practice of framing a double return in the development section in terms of a play with listener expectations is based on the anachronistic assumptions of what I call the “modern paradigm of sonata form”. Placing expectations at the center of analysis and scrutinizing its complex preconditions allows us to arrive at a refined understanding of Haydn’s (and others’) usage of supposedly false recapitulations.

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America, 2020

Haydn’s keyboard works are endlessly fascinating, but they have seldom been the focus of any pedagogical approach to sonata form. This paper will demonstrate how these compositions, often neglected in the undergraduate curriculum, can serve as a springboard into a varied and nuanced understanding of sonata form. Using recent theories of form representative of the “New Formenlehre,” such as William Caplin’s theory of formal functions, Janet Schmalfeldt’s process of “becoming,” and James Hepokoski/Warren Darcy’s Sonata Theory, I will show how Haydn’s sonatas, if carefully selected, can provide students with a more flexible picture of how sonata form worked in the second half of the 18th century. Finally, through a close reading of a particularly challenging work (the slow movement of Haydn’s Sonata in A-flat major, Hob. XVI: 46), I will show how these new theories of form can help students formulate criteria for making sense of the composer’s often contradictory and complex musical decisions in sonata-form movements.