The Classical era and later

By about 1770 most of the specific changes that dictated the shift from Baroque sonata to Classical sonata were firmly established. Through the work of the Neapolitan school of opera led by Domenico Scarlatti’s father, Alessandro, the operatic sinfonia, or overture, had streamlined the traditional sonata da chiesa. It omitted the opening slow movement and abandoned the fugal manner that was the first allegro’s link with the past. In the new three-movement pattern, a minuet sometimes replaced the fast, abstract finale. In other cases, the inclusion of both minuet and finale brought the number of movements back to four. The south German Mannheim school of composers —most notably Johann Wenzel Stamitz and his son Karl—developed the technique of the orchestra, whose resources now provided an ideal laboratory for experimentation with the dramatic effects of tonal contrast.

By this time the Classical sonata proper (i.e., with at least one movement in sonata form), whether in the medium of sonata, trio, quartet, quintet, or symphony, could provide a vehicle for consolidating the process begun nearly two centuries earlier by the revolution from equal-voiced polyphony to monody, with its emphasis on melody and harmony. The Rococo style of the mid-18th century, generally known as style galant, had attained a halfway stage in which counterpoint had been virtually dropped and tunes had occupied the forefront of interest. But now, in the mature Classical style of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, superficial melodic interest was in turn subordinated. In this style the value of tunes lay in their role as functions of tonality. Key by this time had assumed a central role as the fundamental articulator of form. As a corollary, musical themes were often, though not always, reduced to the status of mere motives, or tags. The theme’s harmonic implications, which contribute to the feeling of key, took precedence over its attractiveness as melody.

The new musical principle—that of contrast of key—reached full expression in Haydn and Mozart through their use of sonata form as a principle of musical organization. Haydn’s most valuable work in the sonata form is found in his series of more than 80 string quartets, over 100 symphonies, 52 keyboard sonatas, and 31 trios for piano, violin, and cello. Unlike Haydn, Mozart was at his greatest in the fields of opera and of the solo concerto. (The latter, though it shared with sonata form such elements as the central principle of key contrast, was a medium that evolved, through the Baroque concerto grosso, from the fundamentally different source of the solo vocal aria and the vocal-instrumental concerto.) But in the last six symphonies, the last 10 string quartets, about a dozen keyboard sonatas, and several trios, quartets, quintets, and serenades, Mozart achieved outstanding examples of sonata structures. The formerly prominent sonata for violin plays a relatively minor part in both composers’ output: the violin had been eclipsed by the rise of interest in keyboard instruments. It was reintroduced almost surreptitiously as a distinctly subordinate partner and regained a leading role only toward the end of the 18th century in Mozart’s later violin sonatas and then in those of Ludwig van Beethoven.

The strikingly individual details in Haydn’s and Mozart’s handling of sonata form are all features consonant with the general outlines of the form. Examples of different approaches include Haydn’s taste for combining dualistic key schemes with monistic thematic material (that is, the use of the same basic theme in both keys). He also frequently set slow movements in keys only distantly related to the key of the first movement. Mozart preferred strongly differentiated themes, and he often reshaped his second subjects drastically when they reappeared in the recapitulation. Beethoven, in his sonata-form compositions (preeminently, the 32 piano sonatas, the 16 string quartets, the trios, the 9 symphonies, and the sonatas for violin and for cello), retained the basic form, but he vastly extended its scale. For example, he increased the importance of the coda, or concluding section, and used unusual keys in the exposition, which was greatly expanded in length. In his later sonatas and quartets he began to move away from the dualistic sonata principle and back to the monistic approach exemplified in variation form and fugue.

The case of Franz Schubert is quite different. The first movement of the Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major (written in 1816, when he was 19 years old) is one among several pieces that illustrates a changing attitude to sonata principles. In the recapitulation of this movement, the first theme is given in the subdominant key (the key whose keynote is five tones below that of the tonic, or home key, as F–C, just as the tonic’s keynote is five tones below that of the dominant key, as C–G). This device enables Schubert to place the second theme in the tonic key (the goal of the recapitulation) without altering the transition between the two themes; for the same passage that, in the exposition, took the music from the tonic to the dominant serves, in the recapitulation, to take it from the subdominant to the tonic. This essentially labour-saving procedure is evidence of a certain lack of patience with the workings of sonata form as hitherto practiced. Up to this time, sonata form, first treated as a textbook study after Schubert’s death, was not a set of rules codified by theorists and followed by composers. Rather, it was a principle of composition that grew out of earlier forms and that can be generalized from an examination of the actual work of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and their contemporaries.

Schubert’s interests lay in new directions, and the first steps in two such directions are to be found in the greatest of his instrumental works. His later sonata-form compositions in all instrumental genres—when they follow the rough traditional scheme of exposition, development, and recapitulation—modify it substantially. He frequently expanded the number of tonal centres (central keys) in the exposition, and sometimes also the number of basic themes, from two to three. This tendency toward expansion affects the whole subsequent course of the Austro-German symphonic tradition. It is the direct ancestor of the expositions of Anton Bruckner, with their three distinct thematic groups, and of the vastly extended sonata structures of Gustav Mahler. At the same time, Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major (1822; Wanderer Fantasy) for piano exemplifies an opposite 19th-century trend toward contraction, through the fusion of the sonata’s formerly separate movements into one closely integrated whole: the four movements of the fantasy are based on transformed versions of a single theme. Similarly, in France, Hector Berlioz in his Symphonie fantastique (1830) transformed the theme representing the artist’s beloved (the idée fixe, or fixed idea) so that it took different forms in each movement. In this case the transformation was affected by the program or “plot” of the symphony. This was a departure from the abstract, or plotless, character of the Classical sonata. The tendency toward fusion—that is, toward thematic unity between movements—was the source of the thematic transformations used in symphonic poems, such as those of Franz Liszt, as a basic principle of musical structure. But in these works the program rather than any abstract musical form suggests the particular course of the transformation of the themes. For this reason their specific form does not depend, as did that of the Classical sonata, on the exposition–development–recapitulation principle of contrast, conflict, and reconciliation of keys. A corresponding evolution away from the Classical form of the sonata for one instrument occurs in Liszt’s one-movement Piano Sonata in B Minor (1853). In this work he used a single extended movement with subdivisions analogous to the sections of sonata form. But the specific use of his four themes, which are transformed and combined in free fashion, departs from the usual order of the Classical sonata.

Robert Schumann likewise experimented fruitfully, especially in his Symphony No. 4 in D Minor (1851), with the Schubertian idea of fusing movements together. The tendency to use thematic transformation in a manner that moved away from the Classical sonata form was complemented by César Franck, who adhered to the basic form but from 1841 utilized a “cyclic” approach; that is, one of fusion, or thematic relationships between movements. Johannes Brahms, on the other hand, carried the more familiar Classical sonata form to its highest point of complexity. In addition to making valuable innovations in rhythmic structure, he gave the role of counterpoint a new lease of vigour and interest and used the concept of thematic relationships between movements in a particularly subtle way. The three piano sonatas of Frédéric Chopin are concerned more with lyrical expression than with innovative formal methods. Similarly, the sonata compositions of Carl Maria von Weber and Felix Mendelssohn, which generally followed the patterns of their Classical predecessors and were highly regarded in their day, contributed little to the evolution of sonata form away from its Classical state. This evolution, illustrated by the works of Berlioz and Liszt, was carried forward by Mahler. In his symphonies, expansion—achieved through inclusion of more than two tonal centres and groups of themes—is combined with greater unity between movements. This gives rise to expansive compositions held together by complex interrelationships between themes. Arnold Schoenberg, in such works as his String Quartet No. 1 in D Minor (1904–05), carried the idea of fusion of movements to its logical conclusion: this is a one-movement work with contrasting sections in which all the themes used are derived from a few basic motives.

Two important 19th-century developments tended to weaken the effectiveness of the Classical sonata form as an organizing principle. One, exemplified by Richard Wagner, was an increasing use of chromaticism; that is, of notes and chords foreign to the key in which a passage of music is written. Chromaticism, when used extensively, broke down key feeling. Instead of being heard as a contrast to, or special modification of, the key, it became so prominent that the key itself was not heard strongly enough to establish itself in the listener’s mind. Secondly, Liszt and his followers weakened the sonata form by using in their symphonic poems musical organizations based on program rather than on contrast of keys. But although the effectiveness of key as a basis for musical organization had been weakened by the late 19th century, Mahler and Carl Nielsen provided a modification of the sonata form that made use of tonality in a new way. This innovation, progressive tonality, used the home key as a goal to be worked toward from more or less distant key regions, so that a work ends in a different key from the one in which it began. Mahler and Nielsen arrived at the same notion independently at the same time. Nielsen’s Symphony No. 1 in G Minor (1891–92) and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (1888–94; Resurrection) are the first to use progressive tonality, and both composers forged highly individual new forms from it.

Most compositions written in sonata form after Wagner’s era, however, lack a certain sense of vitality. Frequently, because the effectiveness of key or tonality has been weakened, such compositions centre on melody without the strong contrast of tonality that underlay the Classical sonata. Some composers made stylistic compromises. Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 4 (1936) used his 12-tone (dodecaphonic) approach to composition, an approach that began with a “row,” or series, of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, chosen by the composer to serve as the melodic and harmonic basis for the composition. In this work he fits the 12-tone style into the outlines of sonata form. The result is based on contrasting themes, rather than on the Classical sonata principle of key contrast, because 12-tone music, being atonal, deliberately avoids the creation of a sense of key. In a comparable way, though in the context of a different style, some of the sonatas of Sergey Prokofiev use the outward formal divisions of the Classical sonata form but stress the interest of melody as such, leaving tonality—still present in this case—to play a decorative rather than a structural role.

New principles of musical form

Other modern composers developed new principles of musical form. Although these principles appear in genres traditionally associated with the sonata, such as instrumental sonatas, string quartets, and orchestral works, they vary in the degree to which they are or are not related to the Classical sonata form.

One of the more useful of such principles has been the technique of constructing large-scale compositions from transformations and developments of a single germinal motive, often merely two or three notes. Like Schoenberg’s approach, in which a 12-tone row is transformed, this is actually the application at a more radical and consistent level of the 19th-century principle of thematic transformation. The symphonies of Jean Sibelius are based on this method. So are those of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who also used some of the features of sonata form but imaginatively reshaped them and transformed their proportions to suit his purpose. In the nonsonata works of Schoenberg and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern, the 12-tone method produced legitimate new forms of the highest historical importance; but when forced into an uncomfortable liaison with earlier schemes of organization such as the sonata, its effectiveness diminished. In the works of Béla Bartók, passages built on folk music scales, rather than on the major and minor scales of 18th- and 19th-century keys or tonalities, are used alongside atonal passages. His musical structure frequently takes the form of a combination of elements of sonata form with a simple “archlike” structure such as A B C B A. Paul Hindemith contributed copiously to the sonata medium with works for almost every known instrument, but as far as the form was concerned his innovations were of minor significance. Sir Michael Tippett in his Symphony No. 2 (1956–57) and sonatas (e.g., for piano; for four horns) used tonality in a fresh way, and he effected a stimulating rapprochement of the sonata form with the equal-voice polyphony characteristic of the English fantasia and madrigal (a genre of part-song) of Elizabethan and Jacobean times. The Symphony No. 2 (1964) of Wilfred Josephs showed yet another potentially valuable reinterpretation of the fused-movement approach to the sonata: its long first movement serves the function of exposition, three intermediate movements act on one level as development and on another level as a combination of slow movement and scherzo, and a brief finale serves as a kind of recapitulation.

Other musical approaches use metre and instrumental tone colour to mark important musical points much as traditional sonata form used contrast of keys. Elliott Carter combined a use of germinal motifs with a new rhythmic technique known as “metric modulation,” a controlled change of metre foreshadowed in Brahms’s work by such passages as the end of the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major (1881). Carter’s Sonata for Cello and Piano (1948) is an example of this use of metre. Carter also used the idea of sharply differentiating the musical subject matter given to the individual instruments of an ensemble—a resource found earlier in the String Quartet No. 2 (1913–15) of Charles Ives. Some of the many styles of Igor Stravinsky, particularly after his late adoption of the 12-tone approach, make ingenious use of germinal motives; but the structure of his music is ultimately based on the juxtaposition of large blocks of distinct musical character, rather than on “development” in the sense traditionally associated with the sonata.

Music in the latter half of the 20th century was too various in form, medium, esthetic attitude, and social function to allow any confident predictions. But all these examples suggest that the sonata, and its special manifestation, the sonata form, still provide composers with fertile areas of activity. As in the time of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, success will continue to reward those who develop musical forms that grow naturally from the specific principles of composition used in their works, much as the sonata form grew out of the principle of contrast, conflict, and resolution of tonalities that characterized the sonatas, symphonies, and chamber music of the 18th and 19th centuries.