History of sonata form
Encyclopedia
This article treats the history of sonata form
in the Baroque
, Classical
, Romantic
, and Modern
eras. For a definition of sonata form, see sonata form
. For an account of critical thought as it relates to sonata form, see Criticism and sonata form
. For discussion of works entitled or called sonata see Sonata
.
One of the most influential ideas in the history of Western Classical Music has been the idea of the Sonata Form, since the development of the term "sonata" and the establishment of the practice of the classical masters C.P.E. Bach
, Haydn
, Mozart
, Beethoven
, and Schubert
, and their codification into teaching and theory by later writers, the development and change in the practice of writing works thought to be in the form has a long history, and is intimately related to the developments in orchestral
and chamber music
.
provide examples of the range of possible relationships of theme and harmony possible in the 1730s and 1740s. Some musicologists label Scarlatti as a classical composer, and argue that the classical period begins earlier, but this is not the prevalent usage.
Sonatas were at first written mainly for the violin, and in the course of time a certain formal type was evolved, predominating until the late 18th century. This type is shown in its highest perfection in the sonatas of Bach, Handel, and Tartini – who followed older Italian models and employed a type attributable to masters such as Corelli and Vivaldi (Musical Form, Leichtentritt, Hugo, p. 122).
By the 1730s and 1740s the direction of instrumental works, often considered less important than vocal music, tended towards an overall two-part layout: the binary form. But a section of contrasting material which served as a bridge between them also came to be included. The symphonies of Karl Stamitz have a soft, piano interlude between forte sections.
The crucial elements that led to the sonata form were: the weakening of the difference between binary and ternary form; the shift of texture away from full polyphony (many voices in imitation) to homophony (a single dominant voice and supporting harmony); and the increasing reliance on juxtaposing different keys and textures. As different key relationships took on a more and more specific meaning, the schematics of works altered. Devices such as the "false reprise" fell out of favor, while other patterns grew in importance.
Quite probably the most influential composer on the subsequent development of the sonata form is C.P.E. Bach
, whose father J.S. Bach
was one of the great masters of the late Baroque style. Taking the harmonic and voice-leading techniques that his father had developed, he applied them to the homophonic style – allowing dramatic shifts in key and mood, while maintaining an overall coherence. C.P.E. Bach was a decisive influence on Joseph Haydn
. One of C.P.E. Bach's most lasting innovations was the shortening of the theme to a motif, which could be shaped more dramatically in pursuit of "development". By 1765, C.P.E. Bach's themes, rather than being long melodies, had taken on the style of themes used in sonata form: short, characteristic, and flexible. By linking the changes in the theme to the harmonic function of the section, C.P.E. Bach laid the groundwork that composers such as Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
would exploit.
The practice of the great Classical masters, specifically Haydn and Mozart, forms the basis for the description of the sonata form. Their works served both as the model for the form, and as the source for new works conceived in the sonata form itself. Debates about sonata form therefore reference the practice of Haydn and Mozart extensively.
Joseph Haydn
is thought of as "the Father of the Symphony" and "the Father of the String Quartet". He can also be thought of as the father of the sonata form as a means of structuring works. His string quartets and symphonies in particular display not merely the range of applications of the form, but also the way to exploit its dramatic potential. It is predominantly Haydn who created the transition to the development and the transition to the recapitulation, as moments of supreme tension and dramatic interest. It is also Haydn who enabled a more expansive "contour" for works, by making every aspect of the harmony of a work implicit in its main theme. This is no small innovation, in that it creates a homophonic analog to the polyphonic fugue
– a seed of potential from which the composer could later germinate a range of different effects. Haydn's variety of dramatic effects and ability to create tension was remarked upon in his own time: his music was increasingly taken as the standard by which other practice might be judged.
His set of string quartet
s opus 33 gives the first examples of coordinated use of the resources of the "sonata form" in characteristic fashion. The composer himself listed them as being written on completely new principles and marking the turning point in his technique.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
applied the large-scale ideas of Haydn to opera
, and to the piano concerto
. Mozart's fluidity with the creation of themes, and the dense network of motives and their parts gave his work a surface polish which was remarked upon even by his professional rivals. His own aesthetic was to please the public, but also to create moments which would appeal to the more sensitive ear. By the end of his short life, Mozart had absorbed Haydn's technique, and applied it to his own more elongated sense of theme, for example in the Prague Symphony.
was the composer who most directly inspired the theorists who codified sonata form as a particular practice. While he was grounded in the fluid phrase structures and wider variety of possible schematic layouts that came from Haydn and Mozart, his deepest innovation was to work from both ends of a sonata form, conceiving of the entire structure, and then polishing themes which would support that overarching design. He continued to expand the length and weight of the sonata forms used by Haydn and Mozart, as well as frequently using motives and harmonic models drawn from the two older composers. Because of his use of increasingly characteristic rhythms and disruptive devices, he is seen as a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic periods.
While in literature the "Romantic Period" is conventionally dated from the late 18th century to the early 19th century, in music the overwhelming usage is to date the Romantic period from the middle to late Beethovenian works up to the first decade of the 20th century. While not all critics and composers agree with this usage, it is conventional to see this period as a relatively continuous evolution in style, even though many influential composers and critics drew a sharp break around mid-century; for example Hanslick
and Richard Wagner
both agreed that their era was not "Romantic". Jacques Barzun
has argued that the last half of the 19th century in both music and the arts should be seen as "Realist" and "Naturalist" rather than "Romantic".
In the Romantic
era, sonata form was first explicitly defined, and it became institutionalized. Academic scholars like Adolph Bernhard Marx wrote descriptions of the form, often with a normative goal; that is, a goal of stating how works sonata form should be composed. While the first-movement form had been the subject of theoretical works, it was seen as the pinnacle of musical technique. Part of the training of a 19th-century composer was to write in sonata form, and to favor the "sonata-allegro" form in the first movement of multi-movement compositions.
The 19th century's procedure for writing sonatas diverged from earlier Classical practice, in that it focused more on themes than on the placement of cadences. The monothematic exposition largely disappeared, and it was expected that the themes of the first and second groups would always contrast in character. More generally, the formal outline of a sonata came to be viewed more in terms of its themes or groups of themes, rather than the sharp differentiation of tonal areas based on cadences. In the Classical period, establishing the expectation of a particular cadence, and then delaying or avoiding it, was a common way of creating tension. In the 19th century, with its dramatically expanded harmonic vocabulary, avoidance of a cadence did not have the same degree of unexpectedness. Instead, more distant key regions were established by a variety of other means, including use of increasingly dissonant chords, pedal points, texture, and alteration of the main theme itself.
In the Classical period, the contrast between theme groups, while useful, was not required. The first theme group tended to outline the tonic chord, and the second theme tended to be more "cantabile" in character, but this was far from universal – as Haydn's monothematic expositions, and Beethoven's early rhythmic themes show. Because the power of harmonic opposition, both between tonic and dominant and between major and minor, had less force in the Romantic vocabulary, stereotypes of the "character" of themes became stronger. As the theory of the 19th century described the "sonata principle" as one of opposition between two groups of themes, it was thought by many that the characteristic of the first theme should be "masculine" – strident, rhythmic, and implying a dissonance. By contrast, the second theme group should be drawn more from vocal melody, and be "feminine". It is this contrast between "rhythmic" and "singing" that Wagner, in his very influential work On Conducting, argued was at the very core of tension in music . This led to the belief among many interpreters and composers that texture was the most important contrast, and that tempo should be used to emphasize this contrast: fast sections were conducted faster, slower sections were conducted or played more slowly.
As with many older terminologies, there are modern readers who find it objectionable or stereotypical to describe musical ideas in gendered terms (see Criticism and sonata form
).
By requiring that harmony move with the themes, 19th-century sonata form imposed a kind of discipline on composers, and also allowed audiences to comprehend the music by following the appearance of recognizable melodies. However, the sonata form, as an inherited "mold", also created a kind of tension for Romantic composers: the desire to combine poetical expression and academic rigor, which were often seen as being in conflict.
Later Romantic commentators and theorists detected a "sonata idea", of increasing formalization. They drew a progression of works from Haydn, through Mozart and Beethoven whereby more and more movements in a multi-movement work were felt to be in "sonata-allegro form". The theory these theorists present is that originally only first movements were in that form; then later last movements as well (for example Mozart's "Prague" Symphony
); and the "sonata principle" came to extend through an entire work – for example Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 59 No. 2 was said to have all four movements in sonata-allegro form. By this theorists such as Tovey meant the academically laid-out sonata form. Charles Rosen
has argued that, properly understood, this was always the case: that real sonata forms (plural) were always present, though this is not universally agreed on.
As the 19th Century progressed, the complexity of sonata form grew, as new ways of moving through the harmony of a work were introduced by Johannes Brahms
and Franz Liszt
. Instead of focusing exclusively on keys closely related in the circle of fifths, they used movement along circles based on minor or major triads. Following the trend established by Beethoven, the focus moved more and more to the development section. This was in line with the Romantic comparison of music to poetry. Poetic terms, such as "rhapsody" and "recital" and "tone poem", entered music, and increasingly musicians felt that they should not take the repeats in symphonies because there was no dramatic or lyrical point to doing so. This changed their interpretation of previous sonata forms.
The Romantic sonata form was an especially congenial mold for Brahms, who felt a strong affinity with the composers of the Classical era. Brahms adopted and extended Beethoven's practice of modulating to more remote keys in the exposition, and combined this with the use of counterpoint in the inner voices. For example, his piano quintet
has the first subject in F minor, but the second subject is in C sharp minor, an augmented fifth
higher. In the same work, the key scheme of the recapitulation is also altered – the second subject in the recapitulation is in F sharp minor, rather than the F minor of the first subject.
Another force acting on sonata form was the school of composers centering on Franz Liszt
and Richard Wagner
. They sought to integrate more roving harmonies and unprepared chords into the musical structure, in order to attain both formal coherence and a full expressive range of keys. Increasingly, themes began to have notes which were far from the original key, a procedure later labeled "extended tonality". This trend strongly influenced the next generation of composers, for instance Gustav Mahler
. The first movements of several of his symphonies are described as being in sonata form, although they diverge from the standard scheme quite dramatically. Some have even argued that the entirety of his first symphony (in which material from the first movement returns in the fourth movement) is meant to be one massive sonata-allegro form.
As the result of these innovations, works became more sectional; composers such as Liszt and Anton Bruckner
even began to include explicit pauses in works between sections. The length of sonata movements grew starting in the 1830s. The Prize Symphony by Lachner, a work seldom played today, had a first movement longer than any symphonic first movement by Beethoven. The length of whole works also increased correspondingly. Another area where the sonata form expanded was in the realm of "tone poems" or "symphonic poems", which would often use the first movement form, and greatly extended their length compared with traditional overtures. Berlioz
's "Waverly" overture is as long as some middle-period Haydn symphonies.
One of the debates in the 19th century was over whether it was acceptable to use the layout of a poem or other literary work to structure a work of instrumental music. The compositional school focused around Liszt and Wagner – the so called "New German School" – argued in favor of literary inspiration (see Program music
), while another camp, centered around Schumann
, Brahms, and Hanslick
argued that "pure" music should follow the forms laid out by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. This conflict was eventually internalized, and by 1900, though the debate still raged, composers such as Richard Strauss
would freely combine programmatic and symphonic structure, such as in the work Ein Heldenleben
.
period, sonata form became detached from its traditional harmonic basis. The works of Schoenberg
, Debussy
, Sibelius
and Richard Strauss
emphasized different scales other than the traditional major-minor scale, and used chords that did not clearly establish a tonality
. It could be argued that by the 1930s, "sonata form" was merely a rhetorical term for any movement that stated themes, took them apart, and put them back together again. However, even composers of atonal music, such as Roger Sessions
and Hartman, continued to use outlines that clearly pointed back to the practice of Beethoven and Haydn, even if the method and style were quite different. At the same time, composers such as Sergei Prokofiev
, Benjamin Britten
, and Dmitri Shostakovich
revived the idea of a sonata form by more complex and extended use of tonality
.
In more recent times, Minimalism
has searched for new ways to develop form, and new outlines which, again, while not being based on the same harmonic plan as the Classical sonata, are clearly related to it. An example is Aaron Jay Kernis
's Symphony in Waves from the early 1990s.
Sonata form
Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...
in the Baroque
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
, Classical
Classical period (music)
The dates of the Classical Period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about 1750 and 1830. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or...
, Romantic
Romantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
, and Modern
20th century music
20th century music is defined by the sudden emergence of advanced technology for recording and distributing music as well as dramatic innovations in musical forms and styles...
eras. For a definition of sonata form, see sonata form
Sonata form
Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...
. For an account of critical thought as it relates to sonata form, see Criticism and sonata form
Criticism and sonata form
This article describes the history of musical criticism as applied to sonata form. For the history of sonata form as such, see History of sonata form. The form itself is defined and described in sonata form.-18th century:...
. For discussion of works entitled or called sonata see Sonata
Sonata
Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...
.
One of the most influential ideas in the history of Western Classical Music has been the idea of the Sonata Form, since the development of the term "sonata" and the establishment of the practice of the classical masters C.P.E. Bach
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
right|250pxCarl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach...
, Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, and Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, and their codification into teaching and theory by later writers, the development and change in the practice of writing works thought to be in the form has a long history, and is intimately related to the developments in orchestral
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
and chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
.
Sonata form in the late Baroque era (ca 1710 – ca 1750)
Properly speaking, the sonata form does not exist in the Baroque period; however, the forms which led to the standard definition are present, and, in fact, there are a greater variety of harmonic patterns in the Baroque works labelled "Sonata" than in the Classical period that is to follow. The richly diverse sonatas of ScarlattiDomenico Scarlatti
Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style...
provide examples of the range of possible relationships of theme and harmony possible in the 1730s and 1740s. Some musicologists label Scarlatti as a classical composer, and argue that the classical period begins earlier, but this is not the prevalent usage.
Sonatas were at first written mainly for the violin, and in the course of time a certain formal type was evolved, predominating until the late 18th century. This type is shown in its highest perfection in the sonatas of Bach, Handel, and Tartini – who followed older Italian models and employed a type attributable to masters such as Corelli and Vivaldi (Musical Form, Leichtentritt, Hugo, p. 122).
By the 1730s and 1740s the direction of instrumental works, often considered less important than vocal music, tended towards an overall two-part layout: the binary form. But a section of contrasting material which served as a bridge between them also came to be included. The symphonies of Karl Stamitz have a soft, piano interlude between forte sections.
Sonata form in the Classical era (ca 1750 – ca 1820)
The older Italian sonata form differs considerably from the later sonata in the works of the Viennese Classical masters. Between the two main types, the older Italian and the more "modern" Viennese sonata, various transitional types are manifest in the middle of the 18th century, in the works of the Mannheim composers, Stamitz, Richter, C.P.E. Bach, and many others. The piano sonata had its inception with Johann Kuhnau, the predecessor of Bach as cantor of Saint Thomas' Church in Leipzig. Kuhnau was the first to imitate the Italian violin sonata in clavier music. The clavier sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti form a separate and distinct species, written mostly in one movement, in song form, and in homophonic style. Scarlatti's sonatas too represent a transitional type between the older and the Viennese sonata. In Italy a distinction was made in older times between the sonata da chiesa (church sonata), written in fugal style, and the sonata da camera (chamber sonata) which was really a suite mixed with sonata elements, not derived from the dance.The crucial elements that led to the sonata form were: the weakening of the difference between binary and ternary form; the shift of texture away from full polyphony (many voices in imitation) to homophony (a single dominant voice and supporting harmony); and the increasing reliance on juxtaposing different keys and textures. As different key relationships took on a more and more specific meaning, the schematics of works altered. Devices such as the "false reprise" fell out of favor, while other patterns grew in importance.
Quite probably the most influential composer on the subsequent development of the sonata form is C.P.E. Bach
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
right|250pxCarl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach...
, whose father J.S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
was one of the great masters of the late Baroque style. Taking the harmonic and voice-leading techniques that his father had developed, he applied them to the homophonic style – allowing dramatic shifts in key and mood, while maintaining an overall coherence. C.P.E. Bach was a decisive influence on Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
. One of C.P.E. Bach's most lasting innovations was the shortening of the theme to a motif, which could be shaped more dramatically in pursuit of "development". By 1765, C.P.E. Bach's themes, rather than being long melodies, had taken on the style of themes used in sonata form: short, characteristic, and flexible. By linking the changes in the theme to the harmonic function of the section, C.P.E. Bach laid the groundwork that composers such as Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
would exploit.
The practice of the great Classical masters, specifically Haydn and Mozart, forms the basis for the description of the sonata form. Their works served both as the model for the form, and as the source for new works conceived in the sonata form itself. Debates about sonata form therefore reference the practice of Haydn and Mozart extensively.
Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
is thought of as "the Father of the Symphony" and "the Father of the String Quartet". He can also be thought of as the father of the sonata form as a means of structuring works. His string quartets and symphonies in particular display not merely the range of applications of the form, but also the way to exploit its dramatic potential. It is predominantly Haydn who created the transition to the development and the transition to the recapitulation, as moments of supreme tension and dramatic interest. It is also Haydn who enabled a more expansive "contour" for works, by making every aspect of the harmony of a work implicit in its main theme. This is no small innovation, in that it creates a homophonic analog to the polyphonic fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
– a seed of potential from which the composer could later germinate a range of different effects. Haydn's variety of dramatic effects and ability to create tension was remarked upon in his own time: his music was increasingly taken as the standard by which other practice might be judged.
His set of string quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
s opus 33 gives the first examples of coordinated use of the resources of the "sonata form" in characteristic fashion. The composer himself listed them as being written on completely new principles and marking the turning point in his technique.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
applied the large-scale ideas of Haydn to opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, and to the piano concerto
Piano concerto
A piano concerto is a concerto written for piano and orchestra.See also harpsichord concerto; some of these works are occasionally played on piano...
. Mozart's fluidity with the creation of themes, and the dense network of motives and their parts gave his work a surface polish which was remarked upon even by his professional rivals. His own aesthetic was to please the public, but also to create moments which would appeal to the more sensitive ear. By the end of his short life, Mozart had absorbed Haydn's technique, and applied it to his own more elongated sense of theme, for example in the Prague Symphony.
Sonata form in the Romantic era (ca 1820 – ca 1910)
Ludwig van BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
was the composer who most directly inspired the theorists who codified sonata form as a particular practice. While he was grounded in the fluid phrase structures and wider variety of possible schematic layouts that came from Haydn and Mozart, his deepest innovation was to work from both ends of a sonata form, conceiving of the entire structure, and then polishing themes which would support that overarching design. He continued to expand the length and weight of the sonata forms used by Haydn and Mozart, as well as frequently using motives and harmonic models drawn from the two older composers. Because of his use of increasingly characteristic rhythms and disruptive devices, he is seen as a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic periods.
While in literature the "Romantic Period" is conventionally dated from the late 18th century to the early 19th century, in music the overwhelming usage is to date the Romantic period from the middle to late Beethovenian works up to the first decade of the 20th century. While not all critics and composers agree with this usage, it is conventional to see this period as a relatively continuous evolution in style, even though many influential composers and critics drew a sharp break around mid-century; for example Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick was a Bohemian-Austrian music critic.-Biography:Hanslick was born in Prague, the son of Joseph Adolph Hanslick, a bibliographer and music teacher from a German-speaking family, and one of his piano pupils, the daughter of a Jewish merchant from Vienna...
and Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
both agreed that their era was not "Romantic". Jacques Barzun
Jacques Barzun
Jacques Martin Barzun is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United...
has argued that the last half of the 19th century in both music and the arts should be seen as "Realist" and "Naturalist" rather than "Romantic".
In the Romantic
Romantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
era, sonata form was first explicitly defined, and it became institutionalized. Academic scholars like Adolph Bernhard Marx wrote descriptions of the form, often with a normative goal; that is, a goal of stating how works sonata form should be composed. While the first-movement form had been the subject of theoretical works, it was seen as the pinnacle of musical technique. Part of the training of a 19th-century composer was to write in sonata form, and to favor the "sonata-allegro" form in the first movement of multi-movement compositions.
The 19th century's procedure for writing sonatas diverged from earlier Classical practice, in that it focused more on themes than on the placement of cadences. The monothematic exposition largely disappeared, and it was expected that the themes of the first and second groups would always contrast in character. More generally, the formal outline of a sonata came to be viewed more in terms of its themes or groups of themes, rather than the sharp differentiation of tonal areas based on cadences. In the Classical period, establishing the expectation of a particular cadence, and then delaying or avoiding it, was a common way of creating tension. In the 19th century, with its dramatically expanded harmonic vocabulary, avoidance of a cadence did not have the same degree of unexpectedness. Instead, more distant key regions were established by a variety of other means, including use of increasingly dissonant chords, pedal points, texture, and alteration of the main theme itself.
In the Classical period, the contrast between theme groups, while useful, was not required. The first theme group tended to outline the tonic chord, and the second theme tended to be more "cantabile" in character, but this was far from universal – as Haydn's monothematic expositions, and Beethoven's early rhythmic themes show. Because the power of harmonic opposition, both between tonic and dominant and between major and minor, had less force in the Romantic vocabulary, stereotypes of the "character" of themes became stronger. As the theory of the 19th century described the "sonata principle" as one of opposition between two groups of themes, it was thought by many that the characteristic of the first theme should be "masculine" – strident, rhythmic, and implying a dissonance. By contrast, the second theme group should be drawn more from vocal melody, and be "feminine". It is this contrast between "rhythmic" and "singing" that Wagner, in his very influential work On Conducting, argued was at the very core of tension in music . This led to the belief among many interpreters and composers that texture was the most important contrast, and that tempo should be used to emphasize this contrast: fast sections were conducted faster, slower sections were conducted or played more slowly.
As with many older terminologies, there are modern readers who find it objectionable or stereotypical to describe musical ideas in gendered terms (see Criticism and sonata form
Criticism and sonata form
This article describes the history of musical criticism as applied to sonata form. For the history of sonata form as such, see History of sonata form. The form itself is defined and described in sonata form.-18th century:...
).
By requiring that harmony move with the themes, 19th-century sonata form imposed a kind of discipline on composers, and also allowed audiences to comprehend the music by following the appearance of recognizable melodies. However, the sonata form, as an inherited "mold", also created a kind of tension for Romantic composers: the desire to combine poetical expression and academic rigor, which were often seen as being in conflict.
Later Romantic commentators and theorists detected a "sonata idea", of increasing formalization. They drew a progression of works from Haydn, through Mozart and Beethoven whereby more and more movements in a multi-movement work were felt to be in "sonata-allegro form". The theory these theorists present is that originally only first movements were in that form; then later last movements as well (for example Mozart's "Prague" Symphony
Symphony No. 38 (Mozart)
The Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504, was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in late 1786. It was premiered in Prague on January 19, 1787, a few weeks after Le nozze di Figaro opened there. It is popularly known as the Prague Symphony...
); and the "sonata principle" came to extend through an entire work – for example Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 59 No. 2 was said to have all four movements in sonata-allegro form. By this theorists such as Tovey meant the academically laid-out sonata form. Charles Rosen
Charles Rosen
Charles Rosen is an American pianist and author on music.-Life and career:In his youth he studied piano with Moriz Rosenthal. Rosenthal, born in 1862, had been a student of Franz Liszt...
has argued that, properly understood, this was always the case: that real sonata forms (plural) were always present, though this is not universally agreed on.
As the 19th Century progressed, the complexity of sonata form grew, as new ways of moving through the harmony of a work were introduced by Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
and Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
. Instead of focusing exclusively on keys closely related in the circle of fifths, they used movement along circles based on minor or major triads. Following the trend established by Beethoven, the focus moved more and more to the development section. This was in line with the Romantic comparison of music to poetry. Poetic terms, such as "rhapsody" and "recital" and "tone poem", entered music, and increasingly musicians felt that they should not take the repeats in symphonies because there was no dramatic or lyrical point to doing so. This changed their interpretation of previous sonata forms.
The Romantic sonata form was an especially congenial mold for Brahms, who felt a strong affinity with the composers of the Classical era. Brahms adopted and extended Beethoven's practice of modulating to more remote keys in the exposition, and combined this with the use of counterpoint in the inner voices. For example, his piano quintet
Piano quintet
In European classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments, most commonly piano, two violins, viola, and cello . Among the most frequently performed piano quintets are those by Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, César Franck, Antonín Dvořák...
has the first subject in F minor, but the second subject is in C sharp minor, an augmented fifth
Interval (music)
In music theory, an interval is a combination of two notes, or the ratio between their frequencies. Two-note combinations are also called dyads...
higher. In the same work, the key scheme of the recapitulation is also altered – the second subject in the recapitulation is in F sharp minor, rather than the F minor of the first subject.
Another force acting on sonata form was the school of composers centering on Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
and Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
. They sought to integrate more roving harmonies and unprepared chords into the musical structure, in order to attain both formal coherence and a full expressive range of keys. Increasingly, themes began to have notes which were far from the original key, a procedure later labeled "extended tonality". This trend strongly influenced the next generation of composers, for instance Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
. The first movements of several of his symphonies are described as being in sonata form, although they diverge from the standard scheme quite dramatically. Some have even argued that the entirety of his first symphony (in which material from the first movement returns in the fourth movement) is meant to be one massive sonata-allegro form.
As the result of these innovations, works became more sectional; composers such as Liszt and Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...
even began to include explicit pauses in works between sections. The length of sonata movements grew starting in the 1830s. The Prize Symphony by Lachner, a work seldom played today, had a first movement longer than any symphonic first movement by Beethoven. The length of whole works also increased correspondingly. Another area where the sonata form expanded was in the realm of "tone poems" or "symphonic poems", which would often use the first movement form, and greatly extended their length compared with traditional overtures. Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's "Waverly" overture is as long as some middle-period Haydn symphonies.
One of the debates in the 19th century was over whether it was acceptable to use the layout of a poem or other literary work to structure a work of instrumental music. The compositional school focused around Liszt and Wagner – the so called "New German School" – argued in favor of literary inspiration (see Program music
Program music
Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...
), while another camp, centered around Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, Brahms, and Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick was a Bohemian-Austrian music critic.-Biography:Hanslick was born in Prague, the son of Joseph Adolph Hanslick, a bibliographer and music teacher from a German-speaking family, and one of his piano pupils, the daughter of a Jewish merchant from Vienna...
argued that "pure" music should follow the forms laid out by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. This conflict was eventually internalized, and by 1900, though the debate still raged, composers such as Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
would freely combine programmatic and symphonic structure, such as in the work Ein Heldenleben
Ein Heldenleben
Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, is a tone poem by Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1898, and heralds the composer's more mature period in this genre...
.
Sonata form in the Modern era
In the ModernModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
period, sonata form became detached from its traditional harmonic basis. The works of Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
and Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
emphasized different scales other than the traditional major-minor scale, and used chords that did not clearly establish a tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
. It could be argued that by the 1930s, "sonata form" was merely a rhetorical term for any movement that stated themes, took them apart, and put them back together again. However, even composers of atonal music, such as Roger Sessions
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...
and Hartman, continued to use outlines that clearly pointed back to the practice of Beethoven and Haydn, even if the method and style were quite different. At the same time, composers such as Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
, Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
, and Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
revived the idea of a sonata form by more complex and extended use of tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
.
In more recent times, Minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
has searched for new ways to develop form, and new outlines which, again, while not being based on the same harmonic plan as the Classical sonata, are clearly related to it. An example is Aaron Jay Kernis
Aaron Jay Kernis
Aaron Jay Kernis is an American composer and professor at the Yale School of Music.-Biography:Aaron Jay Kernis is Jewish, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, and Yale University .,Notable works include the...
's Symphony in Waves from the early 1990s.