Form as the Process of Becoming: The Beethoven-Hegelian Tradition and the “Tempest” Sonata

Schmalfeldt, Janet

doi:10.4324/9781315096506-16

Cited by 4 publications

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“…It is in this context that I crystallise the concept of breakthrough into a distinctive formal function that precipitates a process of structural reorientation, or, in the case of the Adagio, tonal‐syntactic functional becoming, which shuffles the listeners’ hearing and transfers their perception of the tonal universe from a star cluster to a solar system. Construing this syntactic conflict in relation to what Schmalfeldt calls the Beethoven‐Hegelian critical tradition (1995 and 2011), the breakthrough can be understood as resulting from the tension between diatonicism and hexatonicism: it attests to a dialectical conception of tonality wherein diatonic and hexatonic syntaxes are in constant opposition, which produces the condition of becoming that otherwise informs the aesthetic and stylistic incongruities – the ‘in‐betweenness’ – in Mahler's music 54 . Mindful of the increasingly frequent dialogue between diatonicism and hexatonicism in music at the fin de siècle, I suggest that this replaces traditional tonic/non‐tonic dualism as a special type of fin‐de‐siècle sonata teleology, where large‐scale processes of becoming emerge as crucial to formal praxis.…”

Section: Towards a Fin‐de‐siècle Turn Of The New Formenlehrementioning

confidence: 99%

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Formalising Star Clusters: Sonata Process and Breakthrough Function in the Adagio of Mahler's Tenth Symphony

Lee¹

2021

Music Analysis

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This article revisits the long‐standing issue of form in the Adagio of Mahler's Tenth Symphony (1910) in light of recent developments in Formenlehre and neo‐Riemannian theory. I consider the movement's sonata properties, as discerned by Kofi Agawu (1986) and Richard Kaplan (2005), by exploring the applicability of William E. Caplin's form‐functional theory (1998) and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy's Sonata Theory (2006) in a post‐Wagnerian tonal environment, construed in terms of Richard Cohn's hexatonic systems (1999) and Julian Horton's model of orbital tonality (2018b). While the argument posits a hexatonically orientated conception of form based on what I theorise as hexatonic tension, special attention is given to the idea of breakthrough as an analytical and hermeneutic point of reorientation: conceived after Janet Schmalfeldt's concept of becoming (2011), the breakthrough initiates a retrospective reinterpretation of the Adagio's tonal universe and consequently turns its form into a diatonically orientated sonata form. The article thus explicates the formal function of breakthrough based on Adorno's aesthetic formulation, propounding a chromatically inflected model of sonata form in response to Seth Monahan's call for a novel framework for Mahler's late works (2011). Together they constitute a foundation of a theory of fin‐de‐siècle modernist symphonic sonata form.

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Section: Towards a Fin‐de‐siècle Turn Of The New Formenlehrementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Marx, Schoenberg, Adorno and Dahlhaus are all considered to represent this school of thought. See Schmalfeldt (1995 and 2011, especially Ch. 2).…”

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Formalising Star Clusters: Sonata Process and Breakthrough Function in the Adagio of Mahler's Tenth Symphony

Lee¹

2021

Music Analysis

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“…See Caplin (); Schmalfeldt (), reprinted in Schmalfeldt (); Vande Moortele (); Martin and Vande Moortele () and Vande Moortele, Pedneault‐Deslauriers and Martin (). A number of responses to Schmalfeldt () appeared in Bergé, Caplin and D'Hoe () and in a special issue of Music Theory Online in 2010.…”

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Functional Analysis at the Fin de Siècle: Genre, Compositional Process and the Demonic in the Rondo of Elgar's Second Symphony

Riley¹

2018

Music Analysis

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The most interesting recent developments in formal function theory have tested its application on nineteenth‐century repertoire. Hitherto, however, functional analysis has touched only lightly on the post‐Wagnerian symphony from around 1900. When music analysis addresses this repertoire today, it is usually by means of the approaches that have become ‘Sonata Theory’. Functional analysis brings different insights, switching the focus to syntax and local formal process. The third‐movement ‘Rondo’ from Elgar's Second Symphony (1911) exemplifies the challenges inherent in progressive Romantic repertoire: while functional analysis can illuminate the syntax and formal processes of this music, it must be applied with an ear to shifting and overlapping functional meanings. The Rondo manifests parallel ambiguities at the levels of paratext and genre. The syntactic continuity and instability foregrounded by functional analysis resonate directly with the movement's thematisation of the demonic and the uncanny through paratext, topic, cyclic reminiscence and generic ambiguity. This article uses the concepts of functional theory to open and discuss questions of genre and compositional process and to reframe the Rondo's programmatic themes from an analytically informed perspective.

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Form as Formula

Moortele

2017

The Romantic Overture and Musical Form From Rossini to Wagner

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Form as the Process of Becoming: The Beethoven-Hegelian Tradition and the “Tempest” Sonata

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Formalising Star Clusters: Sonata Process and Breakthrough Function in the Adagio of Mahler's Tenth Symphony

Formalising Star Clusters: Sonata Process and Breakthrough Function in the Adagio of Mahler's Tenth Symphony

Functional Analysis at the Fin de Siècle: Genre, Compositional Process and the Demonic in the Rondo of Elgar's Second Symphony

Form as Formula

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