The Sonata Principle Reformulated for Haydn Post-1770 and a Typology of his Recapitulatory Strategies

ABSTRACT

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.

Notes

¹ William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (New York, 1998); James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York, 2006).

² See especially Eugene K. Wolf, ‘The Recapitulation in Haydn's London Symphonies’, Musical Quarterly, 52 (1966), 71–89; Ethan Haimo, ‘Haydn's “Altered Reprise”’, Journal of Music Theory, 32 (1988), 335–51 and Haydn's Symphonic Forms: Essays in Compositional Logic (Oxford, 1995); James Webster, Haydn's ‘Farewell’ Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music (Cambridge, 1991), 165–6 and 171–3; George Edwards, ‘Papa Doc's Recap Caper: Haydn and Temporal Dyslexia’, Haydn Studies, ed. W. Dean Sutcliffe (Cambridge, 1998), 291–321; and Steve Larson, ‘Recapitulation Recomposition in the Sonata-Form First Movements of Haydn's String Quartets: Style Change and Compositional Technique’, Music Analysis, 22 (2003), 139–77. Haimo's monograph is based around five compositional ‘principles’, of which the sonata principle is one. These principles are stated loosely and serve to set in motion a process of critical analysis of individual works. The present study tightens up the sonata principle and restates it as a rule, in line with Hepokoski's rigorous critique (see note 8 below). Webster, Edwards and Larson provide ample evidence of Haydn's ‘recomposition’ of the recapitulation. Larson thinks that the String Quartets op. 64 (1790) are pivotal, at least among the quartets, because of Haydn's treatment of phrase structure. The present article argues, by contrast, that Haydn's compositional practice stabilized around 1770 in terms both of the restrictions he imposed upon himself and of the freedoms he allowed himself.

³ Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, 233. Paul Wingfield argues that their Sonata Theory is heavily biased towards the practices of Mozart. ‘Beyond “Norms” and “Deformations”: Towards a Theory of Sonata Form as Reception History’, Music Analysis, 27 (2008), 137–77 (pp. 141–4).

⁴ Donald Francis Tovey, ‘Normality and Freedom in Music’, Essays and Lectures on Music (London, 1949), 183–201 (p. 183).

⁵ Donald Francis Tovey, ‘Sonata Forms’, The Forms of Music: Musical Articles from the Encyclopedia Britannica (London, 1957), 208–32 (p. 210).

⁶ Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms (rev. edn, New York, 1988), 288.

⁷ See, for instance, Symphony no. 49/ii, where the material that expresses initiating function in the first subordinate theme (bars 14–19) never returns in the recapitulation.

⁸ James Hepokoski, ‘Beyond the Sonata Principle’, Journal of the American Musicological Association, 55 (2002), 91–154; see also Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, 242–5.

⁹ A point expanded in Matthew Riley, ‘Sonata Principles’ (review article on Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory), Music and Letters, 89 (2008), 590–8.

¹⁰ See his use of the terms ‘sense’, ‘sensitivity’ and ‘sensibility’. Rosen, Sonata Forms, 287; idem, The Classical Style (new edn, London, 1997), 72 and 74; Riley, ‘Sonata Principles’.

¹¹ See, for instance, William E. Caplin, James Hepokoski and James Webster, Musical Form, Forms and Formenlehre: Three Methodological Reflections, ed. Pieter Bergé (Leuven, 2010).

¹² Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, 233. Elsewhere Hepokoski says that the idea ‘might have been pursued [by Charles Rosen] to engaging conclusions (it does seem to be correct), but Rosen did not follow it up’. ‘Beyond the Sonata Principle’, 120. The present article aspires to be the follow-up.

¹³ Rosen, Sonata Forms, 287.

¹⁴ Caplin, Classical Form, 161.

¹⁵ Ibid., 165–7.

¹⁶ The analysis of Symphony 53/iv refers to the version of the symphony with the overture Hob. Ia as the finale. On the different versions, see A. Peter Brown, The Symphonic Repertoire, 4 vols. (Bloomington, IN, 2002–12), ii: The First Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert (2002), 24, 178–9. Decisions on which symphonies to include are based on the latest dating of Haydn's early symphonies by Sonja Gerlach, which are provided ibid., 29–31. See her ‘Joseph Haydns Sinfonien bis 1774: Studien zur Chronologie’, Haydn-Studien, 7/1–2 (1996), 1–287.

¹⁷ The minor-key music of the imperial composers is discussed in Matthew Riley, The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony in the Age of Mozart and Haydn (New York, 2014), Chapter 2 (pp. 39–69). On Haydn 44/iv, see ibid., 152–62. On the imperial composers, see also Warren Kirkendale, Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music (2nd edn, Durham, NC, 1979). On Haydn's lack of access to imperial court circles, see David Wyn Jones, The Life of Haydn (Cambridge, 2009), 114–15.

¹⁸ Rosen, Sonata Forms, 289–95.

¹⁹ On this movement, see Floyd Grave, ‘Recuperation, Transformation and the Transcendence of Major over Minor in the Finale of Haydn's String Quartet Op. 76 No. 1’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 5 (2008), 27–50 (pp. 37–50). Grave finds the main theme intense and restless, with ‘a congestion of motivic variants’ (p. 37). This congestion is also gradually smoothed out over the course of the recapitulation.

²⁰ Matthew Riley, ‘Hermeneutics and the New Formenlehre: An Interpretation of Haydn's “Oxford” Symphony, First Movement’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 7 (2010), 199–219.

²¹ Rosen comments on the reversal of the themes and the contrast between the order of materials in the development and recapitulation. His account of Symphony 89/i draws deeply on eighteenth-century aesthetic concepts: ‘[Haydn's] new sense of proportion makes possible the greatest play of imagination without disturbing the equilibrium of the whole work’; ‘No work shows better the gap between the academic post facto rules of sonata form and the living rules of proportion, balance, and dramatic interest which really governed Haydn's art.’ Rosen, The Classical Style, 157. On the broader historical resonance of Rosen's approach (and that of his intellectual mentor Tovey), see Riley, ‘Sonata Principles’, 594–8.

²² The phrase ‘partially reversed recapitulation’ is borrowed (and adapted) from Timothy L. Jackson, ‘The Tragic Reversed Recapitulation in the German Classical Tradition’, Journal of Music Theory, 40 (1986), 61–111 (pp. 63–4).

²³ Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, 47–8.

²⁴ Caplin, Classical Form, 117.

²⁵ Ibid., 111, 113.

²⁶ Hepokoski, ‘Beyond the Sonata Principle’, 123–4.

²⁷ Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, 34.

²⁸ Webster, Haydn's ‘Farewell’ Symphony, 165–6.

²⁹ This movement is discussed at length (as are the Lenten associations of the minor-key symphony) in Riley, The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony, 152–62.

³⁰ Janet Levy discusses this movement as an example of ‘contextual signs’. ‘Texture as a Sign in Classic and Early Romantic Music’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 35 (1982), 482–531 (pp. 483–8).

³¹ See also Trio 16/i, where the expansion techniques are slightly different from those in the quartets.

³² Caplin, Classical Form, 179.

³³ Symphony 98/iv could also be counted as the rondo type, though its particular comic strategy is a one-off.

³⁴ Kirkendale, Fugue and Fugato, 91.

³⁵ For more detailed discussions of these four symphony movements, see Floyd Grave, ‘Galant Style, Enlightenment, and the Paths from Minor to Major in Later Instrumental Works by Haydn’, Ad Parnassum, 7 (2009), 9–41 (pp. 15–29), and Riley, The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony, 206–17.

³⁶ Grave, ‘Recuperation, Transformation and the Transcendence of Major over Minor’, 47 (see also p. 50).

³⁷ Webster, Haydn's ‘Farewell’ Symphony, 335–73.

³⁸ Jens Peter Larsen, ‘Some Observations on the Development and Characteristics of Viennese Classical Music’, Chapter 18 of his Handel, Haydn, and the Viennese Classical Style (Ann Arbor, MI, 1988), 227–61 (p. 233).