In Search of Romantic Form

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.

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

confidence: 99%

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

Lee¹

2021

“…2525Thus bars 1–25 form a large‐scale sentence with periodic presentation, an increasingly typical structure in Romantic organisation (see e.g. Vande Moortele 2013, p. 415).…”

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confidence: 99%

Formal Jests: the Sonata‐Form Scherzo in Mendelssohn's Mature Chamber Music

Taylor¹

2021

One of the most striking aspects of Mendelssohn's scherzi is his unusual propensity for sonata form in this movement type. Yet in referencing sonata construction, the composer frequently appears to be playing against its norms, taking delight in confounding expectations in the movement's formal twists and turns, as if this ambiguous and ever‐shifting relation were itself a crucial part of the aesthetic quality of the music. The present article examines the manipulations of form present in the sonata‐orientated scherzi of Mendelssohn's mature chamber works from the period 1837–45: those of the String Quartets Op. 44 Nos 2 and 3 and the Piano Trios Op. 49 and Op. 66. In doing so, it makes several significant contributions to current debates about sonata form. First, while continuing the incursion of Formenlehre into the nineteenth century, it brings discussion of sonata form round to address a movement type – the scherzo – not normally considered in recent discussions. Second, the interaction between different formal types posited by these movements has numerous similarities with the dialogic approach foregrounded by James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy's sonata theory. The playful ambiguities suggested by Mendelssohn's scherzi seem particularly suited to a theory in which formal meaning is understood to arise from the productive tension between expectation and realisation, abstract generic norm and particular instantiation. Still, much of Mendelssohn's subtle manipulation of form occurs on the smaller‐scale level of syntax, and one of this study's final implications concerns the interrelation between top‐down, intentional models and bottom‐up, generative approaches to form.

“…To be sure, Smith finds the position he ascribes to me so untenable that he goes hunting for indications in my writings that I don't really believe in it either. But he could have saved himself the trouble: in 2013 and again in 2017 I wrote, after discussing the pros and cons of the negative and the positive approaches in their pure forms, that ‘what is needed is a model in which the negative and positive approaches to nineteenth‐century form can coexist’ (Vande Moortele 2013, p. 411; see also Vande Moortele 2017, p. 11). I don't see how that position is so different from Smith's own, which he summarises as an ‘approach [that] gives full weight to the ongoing, circumpolar influence of late eighteenth‐century conventions even while theorizing the linear evolution of more prototypically nineteenth‐century practices’ (Smith 2020, p. 205).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…I don't see how that position is so different from Smith's own, which he summarises as an ‘approach [that] gives full weight to the ongoing, circumpolar influence of late eighteenth‐century conventions even while theorizing the linear evolution of more prototypically nineteenth‐century practices’ (Smith 2020, p. 205). On the general idea of combining a circumpolar and linear perspective, see Vande Moortele (2013, p. 411 and 2017, p. 11); on specific ways in which the tension between Classical theories and Romantic practice might be made productive, see Vande Moortele (2019, 2020 and 2021).…”

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confidence: 99%

Apparent Type 2 Sonatas and Reversed Recapitulations in the Nineteenth Century

Moortele¹

2021

Self Cite

In a small number of sonata forms scattered across the nineteenth century, the development is followed immediately by a return of the subordinate theme, the main theme coming back only later or not at all. How to interpret these forms – often casually referred to as sonata forms with ‘reversed recapitulation’ – has been a topic of debate among theorists within the new Formenlehre. While some (e.g. Hepokoski and Darcy 2006, Smith 2019 and Hepokoski 2021) have argued against the ‘reversed recapitulation’ model and in favour of an understanding along the lines of the (eighteenth‐century) ‘type 2 sonata’, others (e.g. Wingfield 2008, Wingfield and Horton 2012 and Vande Moortele 2017) have problematised that position on historical and analytical grounds. This article weighs the arguments for and against the various positions, at once problematising the type 2 approach and arguing for a more restrictive application of the reversed recapitulation idea. Analyzing more and less familiar pieces by Mendelssohn (Octet, Op. 20/ii), Schumann (Symphony No. 4/iv), Martucci (Piano Trio Op. 62/iv), Hartmann (Piano Sonata Op. 34/iv) and Hummel (Piano Sonata Op. 106/iv), it develops ways of thinking about these forms that move beyond the dichotomy between type 2 and reversed recapitulation by introducing the categories of ‘main‐theme deletion’ and ‘development‐recapitulation fusion’.