Repriza Nonresolving Mozart Beeth

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19th-Century Music, XXV/2–3, pp. 127–54. ISSN: 0148-2076. © 2002 by The Regents of the University ofCalifornia. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, Universityof California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

1James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of SonataTheory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eigh-teenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, forthcoming). Elements of Sonata Theory takes up

My plan here is less ambitious. I shall merelycall attention to some elementary analyticalpoints about a few works of Beethoven and ofMozart and inquire into their ramications fora more productive hermeneutics. This articleis primarily neither about Beethoven and Mozartnor about the analyses themselves. Instead, itis an exercise in a way of framing questions, ofpursuing implications, of registering the pro-vocative corollaries that even simple observa-tions can generate.

My point of departure—the initial elemen-tary observation—is noticing the curiosity, in

Back and Forth from Egmont:

Beethoven, Mozart, and the

Nonresolving Recapitulation

JAMES HEPOKOSKI

In a world of contending analytical systems,several of which have settled into the comfortsof orthodoxy, what does it mean to confrontformal structures adequately? At times it canbe a matter of nding a fresh perspective thatencourages us to ask questions that might oth-erwise be overlooked, neutralized, or dismissedwithin current paradigms. What would it re-quire to seek a different perspective, to proceedfrom a new site of questioning?

In what follows I shall glance at a few ideasthat we might use in sonata-form analysis—tosuggest some features of a perhaps unaccus-tomed mode of thinking about this topic. Alongthe way this may entail some unfamiliar con-cepts, terms, and denitions, all of which arebasic to the analytical and interpretationalmethod that I call Sonata Theory. Laying outthe justication for each concept would be adifferent enterprise altogether, requiring manyseparate discussions. And in any event, that

aspect of the project is carried out elsewhere.1

in more detail each aspect of the terminology and style ofthe hermeneutics that underpin this article. Put anotherway, my goal here cannot be to derive this system butonly, within certain limitations, to demonstrate the meth-odology in action. Thus I hope to suggest some of thepractical results to which it leads and to refer readers tothe more elaborate discussions of the basic principles thatwill soon appear in the Elements of Sonata Theory . I should

perhaps mention two additional points. First, while thereare points of contact between the present article and theforthcoming book, this article, taking up a central issueand several examples in more detail, is not an extract fromthe latter. Second, this essay was conceived as one of acomplementary pair of articles. Its sibling is “Beyond theSonata Principle,” Journal of the American MusicologicalSociety 55 (2002), 91–154.



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some sonata-form compositions, of what I callthe nonresolving recapitulation. The term isnot self-explanatory. From the outset we haveto think about denitions. This use of the wordrecapitulation refers to what I distinguish asthe rhetorical recapitulation, a stretch of com-positional space normatively recognizable as

by and large symmetrical in layout to the expo-sition-pattern, its thematic and textural model.(It is sometimes useful to distinguish this rhe-torical recapitulation, a matter of thematic-modular arrangement, from the completion ofthe linear-tonal argument—a tonal resolution—which may be understood to concern itself withharmonic matters.) Although a range ofrecapitulatory deviations from the referentialpattern are possible—deletions, reorderings,telescopings, expansions, recompositions of in-dividual sections—within customary practiceexpositions and rhetorical recapitulations are

usually kept roughly commensurate with eachother. In a nonresolving recapitulation the com-poser has crafted this rhetorical recapitulatoryrevisiting, or new rotation,2 of previously or-dered expositional materials to convey the im-pression that it “fails” to accomplish its addi-

tional generic mission of tonal closure. Rare inthe decades around 1800, this phenomenon iseasy to identify, but the conceptual and inter-pretive problems swirling around it are numer-ous and challenging.

The Overture to EGMONT : Nonresolution,

Deferral, and Post-Sonata Attainment

We may begin by reminding ourselves of whatis surely the locus classicus of the nonresolvingrecapitulation: Beethoven’s Egmont Overture,op. 84 (1810). Here the exposition’s tonal planis regular, moving from minorÊi to major III forthe secondary theme (from F minor to A ma-jor). Moreover, the secondary theme’s genericgoal, like that of all secondary themes of thisperiod, is to secure a perfect authentic cadencein the new key—to produce what I call thepoint of essential expositional closure (the EEC).

I understand the EEC as the rst satisfactoryperfect authentic cadence in the subordinatekey that proceeds onward to differing material.(Demonstrating what is meant by satisfactorywould lead us astray here. This is a compli-cated and fundamental issue within SonataTheory.) For now, we need only observe that itscorresponding moment in the recapitulation isthe point of essential structural closure, theESC. This is expected to be a perfect authenticcadence in the tonic, thus completing the es-sential structural trajectory of the musical pro-cess at hand. In other words, the ESC marks

the attainment of a resolving recapitulation,one with a satisfactory articulation of closurein the tonic. The outlines of this are indicatedin the diagrams in g. 1a–b, which provide anoverview of the generalized conception of so-nata form under the paradigm of Sonata Theory.(P, TR, S, and C stand for primary theme, tran-sition, secondary theme, and closing theme;MC stands for the medial caesura [the frequentmidexpositional, cadential break in a two-partexposition]; PAC stands for a perfect authenticcadence.)3

2By a rotational process I mean an ordered arrangement ofdiverse thematic modules that is subjected to a (usuallyvaried or altered) recycling, or several recyclings, later onin the work. Expositions thus provide an ordered, referen-tial rotation through a set of materials that is recycled,

with alterations, in the recapitulatory rotation. In the de-cades around 1800 developments may also be fully or par-tially rotational (including the possibility of half-rotations,blocked rotations, and the like), although nonrotationaldevelopments are also a possibility. The concept is elabo-rated further in Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of SonataTheory, which also includes a discussion of the utility ofthe specic term, “rotation.” For considerations of rota-tions a century later, see Hepokoski, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp.23–26, 58–84; “The Essence of Sibelius: Creation Mythsand Rotational Cycles in Luonnotar,” in The Sibelius Com- panion, ed. Glenda Dawn Goss (Westport: Greenwood,1996), pp. 121–46; and “Rotations, Sketches, and [Sibelius’s]Sixth Symphony,” Sibelius Studies, ed. Timothy L. Jack-son and Veijo Murtomäki (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 2001), pp. 322–51. See also Darcy, “The Meta-

physics of Annihilation: Wagner, Schopenhauer, and theEnding of the Ring,” Music Theory Spectrum 16 (1994), 1–40; “Bruckner’s Sonata Deformations,” in Bruckner Stud- ies, ed. Timothy L. Jackson and Paul Hawkshaw (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 256–77; and“Rotational Form, Teleological Genesis, and Fantasy-Pro-jection in the Slow Movement of Mahler’s Sixth Sym-phony,” this journal 25 (2001), 49–74.

3For the MC and two-part exposition, see Hepokoski andDarcy, “The Medial Caesura and Its Role in the Eigh-teenth-Century Sonata Exposition,” Music Theory Spec-trum 19 (1997), 115–54. For considerations of the addi-tional concepts, see Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, from which gs. 1a–b are taken.



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a. Exposition only

Essential Expositional Trajectory (to the EEC)

PACEEC

Relaunch:S

“new key”usuallyoften lyrical, etc.

piano

C

Post-cadential “Appendix” or set of“accessory ideas.” May bemultisectional (C , C , etc.) and ofvarying lengths. Usually orgaining in rhetorical force.

nalcadence

1 2

forteLaunch:

P

proposes themain idea forthe sonata

“continuation modules,” or:series of energy-gaining modules

. . . . . . .TR = “energy-gain”+ “acceptance” of P

tonic key

non-tonic keyin V(or, if P was in minor, in III or in v)

Exposition, Part 1 Exposition, Part 2

b. The entire structure

Essential Sonata Trajectory (to the ESC)

EEC

S C

nalcadence

P TR

I

V or III

Development:often P– or P–TR dominated

(perhaps “rotational”)

interruption

V aschord

MC ESC

S C

nalcadence

Coda

P TR

I

oftenrecomposed

(emph: IV?)

I I

“restart”

,

MC,

MC,

(“tonal resolution”)

Exposition Development Recapitulation(One central mission: laying outthe strategy for the eventual attainmentof the ESC: a

(S, as agent, carries out the central generictask of the sonata—securing the ESC:a“structure of promise” “structure of accomplishment”) )

often forte

either modulatoryor non-modulatory

Figure 1a–b: The Generic Layout of Sonata Form (Exposition and Entire Movement).



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In the exposition of the F-Minor EgmontOverture the EEC is produced unequivocallywith a perfect authentic cadence in III (A ma-jor) in m. 104. (Example 1, only a melodic line,provides an aide-mémoire .) Following genericexpectation, one anticipates, even within aquasi-programmatic overture of that period, that

in the recapitulation the secondary theme willreturn and resolve in the tonic, producing anESC in either a victorious F major or a tragic Fminor that is reinforced by a brief closing zonein the same key. But this does not happen. Inthe rst half of the recapitulatory space thedrive to the medial caesura is derailed onto asuddenly asserted D major (VI, m. 207: see ex.2), soon proceeding to a prolonged dominantchord of the same key, mm. 217–24 (with MCat m. 224). Consequently, the secondary theme,merely transposed from the exposition—as istypical—is articulated not in the expected tonic,

F major, but rather in the submediant, D ma-jor. It is in this “wrong key” that the rhetoricalcadential substitute for the ESC is made tooccur (m. 247). This perfect authentic cadencein VI is conrmed by a similar D -major clos-ing zone—a transposition of the original twelvemeasures from the exposition. This closingtheme brings the rhetorical recapitulation to acadential and emphatically major-mode end,though a tonally displaced one, in m. 259. Insum, the recapitulatory rotation has not pro-duced a tonal resolution. All of its closures are

in a “false” VI, D major, not in the “true”tonic, F. This produces one type of nonresolvingrecapitulation.

So much might seem self-evident—but evenhere we might pause to underscore the pointand to anticipate one or two possible caution-ary or critical replies. Within this repertory thecrucial tonal factor, rendered effectively obliga-tory by decades of precedents, is recapitulatoryresolution in the tonic. To my observation aboutthe nonresolution in Egmont, though, one mightimagine a caveat suggesting that since theexposition’s A and the recapitulation’s D are

related by fth-transposition, this would suf-ce to produce at least some type of satisfac-tory balance, both because fth-relations withthe exposition at this point of the compositionare common within sonata forms and be-cause there are a few celebrated precedents in

Beethoven for answering expositional mediantswith recapitulatory submediants (most nota-bly, in the Piano Sonatas in G, op. 31, no. 1,movt. I; and C, op. 53, movt. I).

To this objection, however familiar orcommonsensical it might initially seem, onecan propose several interrelated lines of re-

sponse, which are perhaps necessary only totouch on here. The rst point to recognize isthat the most often-cited Beethovenian prece-dents (pre-Egmont) for such fth-relations be-tween expositional mediant and recapitulatorysubmediant occur in major-mode compositions(where an expositional choice of iii or III for thesecondary theme would be unusual), not inminor-mode ones. When such a recapitulatorysubmediant “balance”—if that is in fact whatit is—is furnished in these major-mode prece-dents, the recapitulatory VI, unlike the exposi-tional III, is usually ephemeral, incapable of

sustaining itself at length. Very soon after itbegins, the submediant-inected secondary-theme area self-corrects to the tonic to resolveproperly (that is, to produce a normative, tonicESC). This may involve a backing-up to rebeginthe entire, “improperly launched” S-theme inthe tonic (as in op. 31, no. 1, movt. I) or analmost immediate tonal correction en routewithin the S-theme itself (as in op. 53, movt.I).4 In other words, from an only slightly ad-justed standpoint the perceived tonal balance

4A related situation occurs when the second half of anexposition, grounded essentially in the “proper” key, thedominant in major-mode expositions, contains an interiorpassage that momentarily tonicizes a contrasting key (notnecessarily a mediant) only to return to the more standardkey to conclude the passage in question. Normally, towardthe end of the movement, the fth-transposition that gov-erns the shift from the expositional V to the recapitulatoryI will also—as a matter of course—control any eetinginterior “escape” to the contrasting key. The rst move-ment of Beethoven’s String Quartet in D, op. 18, no. 3, forexample, arrives at an A major (V) perfect authentic ca-dence in m. 57, but slips ephemerally into C major (locally,III of A) in mm. 68–71—shortly thereafter returning to A

minor (mm. 72–75) and A major (m. 76). In therecapitulation’s fth-transposition the corresponding key

that is briey alluded to, of course, is F major ( III of D),mm. 199–202. (Here I avoid the term “secondary theme”because this exposition is better interpreted as a provoca-tive instance of the second type of continuous exposition,lacking a proper medial caesura and secondary theme—astructural and expressive issue whose explication wouldrequire too much space in the present context. See, how-ever, n. 23 below along with its related passage in the text.)



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205

214

224 SMC

dolce

5Thus in their incompleteness—or when not followed upwith a more precise description of the situation at hand—one might nd blunt statements of the type encountered,

e.g., in Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 244, tobe insufcient: “In the Waldstein Sonata, in C major, theE major mediant of the exposition is balanced by thesubmediant A major/minor in the recapitulation. In theSonata for Piano in G Major, op. 31, no. 1, the secondgroup in the mediant B major returns in the submediant Emajor.” Compare n. 6 below.

82

94

106

S

CEEC

dolcecresc.

dolce

33 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Example 1: Beethoven, Overture to Egmont, op. 84, mm. 82–116 (single voice line only).

Example 2: Beethoven, Overture to Egmont, op. 84, mm. 205–28 (single voice line only).

that “Beethoven invariably balances a mediantin the exposition with a submediant in therecapitulation” (italics mine).6 This is not the

in these cases might be more accurately con-strued as a complementary recapitulatoryfeint—something soon amended—that recallsor acknowledges the non-normative key plantedin the parallel passage of the exposition. It maybe the non sustain ab le aspect of therecapitulatory submediant, not its eeting ap-pearance, that is the main point.5

Moreover, as a general claim or summationof “common wisdom” about sonatas, it is nottrue, as Charles Rosen has recently asserted,

6Rosen, “Schubert’s Inections of Classical Form,” in TheCambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H.Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p.87. One presumes that Rosen’s initial impulse, in thiscontext (a discussion of tonal issues in Schubert’s “GrandDuo” in C, D. 812, movt. I), was to refer primarily tomajor-mode sonata-form examples, since the number ofself-evident minor-mode sonata-form contradictions to theclaim is vast (as is mentioned in my subsequent paragraphbelow in the text). And yet, following references to op. 31,no. 1, and op. 53, Rosen sought to include a number ofminor-mode “late-style” examples of this, some of which,as it happens, were inaccurate.

Additionally, Rosen suggested—with slightly more de-tail, perhaps, in The Romantic Generation, p. 244, directlyfollowing the statements cited in n. 5 above—that “in theE at-Major Quartet, op. 127 [rst movement], the mediantG major is balanced later by submediant C major.” Theproblematic element nessed in this claim (concealed un-der the general word, “later”) is that the presumed balanceoccurs in fundamentally different parts of the rotational



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case, for instance, with the C-Major Overture,Leonore 3 (1806), whose expositional S-themein E major (III) is recapitulated intact, more orless as a direct transposition (including sometransient internal sequences), down a majorthird, in C. And although the very concept of arecapitulation is problematized in its C-major

predecessor, Leonore 2 (1805), we may at leastobserve that no submediant balance for theexposition’s secondary-theme mediant is pro-vided in the nal third of the composition (say,mm. 348 [C minor]–530): the closest approxi-mation comes with the E trumpet-calls (unre-lated to the secondary theme), mm. 392–441, aat-mediant “breakthrough” parenthesis withinthe form. In short, even in major-mode sonataforms of this period not all expositionalmediants call forth recapitulatory submediantsin the complementary passages. And when theydo not, we do not criticize these works as awed

or unbalanced.7

With this in mind, we may return the “fth-transposition” discussion to minor-mode so-nata-form practice, perhaps more immediatelyrelevant to the F-Minor Egmont. And here thecentral point is this: minor-mode expositionswith secondary and closing themes in III (thatis, most minor-mode expositions) do not nor-

mally provide such a “balancing” submediantat the corresponding points in the recapitula-tion. Instead, the recapitulatory S and C almostalways appear only in the tonic—that is, downa third from the exposition. As a result, minor-mode sonatas moving to the mediant in theirexpositions are not primarily under the sway ofthe fth-transposition guideline more properlyencountered as normative practice in thosemajor-mode works (or minor-mode works) thatmove to the dominant in their expositions. Tobe sure, any nontonic fth-transposition thatdoes occur in a minor-mode sonata form (such

as the A –D relation in Egmont) provides asymmetrical tonal logic that is instantly com-prehensible as a musical procedure. When suchsymmetries do occur (and again, they need notdo so), they may also be interpreted as alluding to the tonal satisfactions normatively obtainedthrough the usual fth-conventions of major-mode practice. But there is no reason to sup-pose that the situation must be interpreted thatway, nor that the resulting structure is some-how rendered satisfactory solely on the basis ofthis hypothetical allusion. In other words, a

musical conguration may be in some respectsrhetorically balanced while still falling short ofbasic expectations in other generic areas. Andthat “falling short” might be the larger, moretroubling point of the composition. Here andelsewhere, the problem-ridden fth-relation ar-gument alone does not provide an adequateexplanation for what happens in Egmont. In-deed, invoking it only leads to more conceptualuncertainties. In this piece the rhetorical reca-

layout. The exposition’s secondary theme, in the mediant(m. 41), returns intact in the tonic in the recapitulation(m. 207), a situation unlike that in op. 31, no. 1, movt. Iand op. 53, movt. I. The cited C-major element surfaces(and is nonsustainable) only considerably earlier and withreference to another theme altogether, at m. 135, Maestoso(the onset of the third rotation of basic materials). Amongthe obvious questions to be raised are: how can tonal “bal-ances” occur in radically different parts of a rotationallayout?; how can recapitulatory, pre-medial-caesura tonalmoves “balance” expositional, post-medial-caesura keys?;why are the specic thematic or textural statements that

underpin these “balances”—and their assigned positionswithin the general layout—utterly irrelevant to these tonalgeneralizations?7Also instructive is the perhaps related procedure found inthe rst movement of the String Quintet in C, op. 29.Here the exposition (mm. 1–93), non-normatively, movesfrom an initial I (C major) to the submediant, VI and vi (Amajor, A minor). (At this point one might recall Rosen’sassertion in The Romantic Generation, p. 240: “Oneshould, I suppose, make basic distinctions among thesethird relationships: major and minor mediant, attedmediant, submediant, and atted submediant. . . . ButBeethoven employs all of these in similar fashion.”) Therecapitulation of op. 29, movt. I, presents the correspond-ing S–C portion (which, like the exposition, includes aeetingly local tonal “escape” to a related at-key shortlyinto the passage) up a third, in C major-minor-major

throughout, albeit with expansions and other rhetoricalcomplications at its end, none of which are directly re-lated to tonal choice. Thus in this recapitulation, as wouldbe the case in Leonore 3, Beethoven provides not the slight-est hint of any lower- (or upper-) fth-based balance orcompensation for the unusual S-and-C key in the exposi-tion. One may conclude that within this repertory whatwe might regard today as compensatory fth-balances in

certain recapitulations were optional features. In other

words, when they do appear, they are surely importantand worthy of our hermeneutic attention, but they seemnot to have responded to what we might imagine to beBeethoven’s keen sense “in general” about the acute needto provide such a recapitulatory balance. (Compare alsothe recapitulatory tonic-treatment of the originallysubmediant secondary theme in the rst movement of the“Archduke” Piano Trio in B , op. 97.)



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pitulation, however balanced, is most prot-ably regarded as nonresolving.

Nor is this the place to enter at length into aquite differing discussion, perhaps occurring tocurrent neo-Riemannian or transformation theo-rists, concerning the degree to which therecapitulation’s D within S and C may be seen

as something of a workable substitute or proxyfor the more normative F-minor tonic (and in-deed, as a sonority prepared by earlier appear-ances of D major within the overture, as inmm. 15–17 of the introduction). Inecting thepitch C of an F-minor triad up a half step toD —one type of 5–6 shift that is sometimesnow referred to as the “L” relation for Leitton-wechsel—would produce a D triad, which couldbe stabilized by being recongured into rootposition. In Richard Cohn’s terms, F minor andD major are thereby hexatonically (and“smoothly”) related as “adjacent harmonies”

on a cycle of triads based on voice-leading ef-ciency. One could thus envision an argumentsuggesting that the Overture to Egmont mightbe more preoccupied with laying out equiva-lences within hexatonic elds or cycles ratherthan relying on a perhaps overly restrictive tonicresolution per se.8 Such a proposition can hardlybe regarded as irrelevant (even though suchclaims are typically more fruitful when appliedto a more chromatically saturated music later

in the century). Nevertheless, once again, giventhe early-nineteenth-century context it wouldsurely be preferable to suppose that Beethovenwas working most fundamentally within so-nata-generic guidelines rmly established byprecedent and resolutely diatonic (and therebyinvoking the tonic/nontonic binary) in their

expected practice.Taking the more obvious interpretive course,by regarding the overture as purposefully dis-playing a generically transgressive tonal path,one of nonresolution, also leads to more re-warding hermeneutic observations. The theat-rical implication—sonata-process as meta-phor—could not be clearer. Just as in Goethe’splay, the hero and political martyr, the FlemishCount Egmont, fell short of the immediate idealof liberating the Netherlands from Spain, sotoo the sonata-space of Beethoven’s overturereplicated that lack of success in the purely

musical terms of a nonresolving recapitulation.Similarly, just as Count Egmont’s impendingexecution at the end of the play—the sign ofhis apparent failure within his own sphere oftime and action—was in the long run to be theigniter of utopian consequences (as we learnfrom his famous last-moment prison-speechforetelling the uprising of the people), so too,the “sonata-failure” in the overture’s reca-pitulatory space functions as the musical pre-condition for the work’s tonal resolution out-side of sonata-space, namely, in the coda.9

And what happens, of course, is well known.Following the rhetorical recapitulation, a short,S-based in-tempo link (mm. 259–86) begins adénouement-appendix interpretable as includ-ing a reference to Egmont’s execution (m. 278).10

8

See, e.g., Richard L. Cohn, “Maximally Smooth Cycles,Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-RomanticTriadic Progressions,” Music Analysis 15 (1996), 9–40;Cohn, “As Wonderful as Star Clusters: Instruments forGazing at Tonality in Schubert,” this journal 22 (1999),213–32; and the entire issue of Journal of Music Theory 42(1998), devoted to Neo-Riemannian theory. The transfor-mation-labels “L” (Leittonwechsel, or “leading-tone ex-change”), “P” (parallel), and “R” (relative), a developmentof earlier work by David Lewin, were proposed by BrianHyer, Tonal Intuitions in Tristan und Isolde (Ph.D. Diss.,Yale University, 1989); and presented in a formal publica-tion in Hyer, “Reimag(in)ing Riemann,” Journal of MusicTheory 39 (1995), 101–38. The suggestion of potential tonalsubstitutions and tonal representations “by proxy” (p. 228)is most clearly anticipated in Cohn, “As Wonderful as StarClusters,” e.g., p. 231: “My thesis [concerning the rst

movement of Schubert’s B Piano Sonata, D. 960] . . . isthat efcient voice leading, emphasizing semitonal dis-placement, furnishes a context in which to understandnineteenth-century triadic progressions that are not ad-equately reconcilable to diatonic tonality. . . . Diatonictonality and voice-leading proximity are equivalently sys-tematic ways of interpreting harmonic relations.” Com-pare n. 17 below.

9Compare the similar remarks in Martha Calhoun, “Mu-sic as Subversive Text: Beethoven, Goethe and the Over-ture to Egmont,” Mosaic 20 (1987), 43–56 (esp. pp. 50–51).10Calhoun, “Music as Subversive Text,” pp. 50–51, laysout the allusive options: “The break [the rst fermata, m.278] could represent Klärchen’s death, the quasi-chorale[mm. 279–86, leading to the second fermata on V], theapparition to Egmont of Freedom in the form of Klärchen,

and the Symphony of Victory [mm. 287 ff.], Egmont bravelymounting the scaffold to die as an example. Or, the [rst]break could represent Egmont losing his head; the reli-gious music intones a eulogy or apotheosis, while the codacelebrates the eventual victory of the Netherlands. Whilethe rst interpretation seems more in line with Goethe’sEgmont, the second agrees more closely with what weknow of Beethoven’s vision of the play. Still, both play out



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This link shows us that the recapitulation’s con-cluding D major was, in the long run, a mereupper neighbor to V of F (fully secured in mm.285–86, under an expectant fermata), the domi-nant precondition for real tonal resolution. Andon that V of F is ushered in the utopian codaproper, the Siegessymphonie (Victory Sym-

phony) in F major (mm. 287 ff., Allegro conbrio)—probably triggering a dramatic shift fromthe local struggles of present time to an ideallyprojected future—with a rapidly gathering rushfrom pianissimo to fortissimo . Only here is theoverture’s initial F minor both resolved and over-turned in jubilant F-major cadences.

Thus the self-evident analytical observation:a nonresolving recapitulation defers closure be-yond rhetorical sonata-space into a function-ally enhanced coda. Rhetorical structures andtonal structures do not coincide. But this obser-vation opens the door onto a thicket of related

reections. Confronting the historical state ofthe genre “sonata form,” for instance—how itscomponent spaces emerged historically—meansconfronting the distinction between closure ac-complished inside the rhetorical recapitulation(always a generically obligatory space within asonata, one whose express task was to deliverthat closure) and closure deferred to a rhetori-cal coda (an optional, not-sonata accretion thathad arisen to serve a variety of grounding func-tions, though not this one of functional resolu-tion). In terms of its generic history a coda

existed to interact on its own terms with thecompleted essential action of the preceding so-nata form—extending, conrming, celebrating,reacting, and so on. Although codas were in-creasingly placed in provocative juxtapositionswith the sonata, as rhetorically extra spacesthey were parageneric surpluses not to be mis-taken for the essential action itself.

Such a realization raises the question ofwhether a parageneric zone not historically fash-ioned to produce essential closure—the coda—can in fact do the job non-problematically, as a

fortuitous stand-in for an insufciency of priorsonata-action. In this historical period such asituation is never problem free. From an onlyslightly shifted hermeneutic perspective onemight wonder whether a closure-providing codadoes not so much resolve the deferred tonalargument as reect on the absence of closure in

the recapitulatory space. Restated: In resolvingwhat was not resolved earlier, such a coda mightserve principally to show us what the precedingsonata form did not accomplish, thus under-scoring the primacy of the more essentialrecapitulatory nonresolution. Alternatively, arhetorically reinforced resolution within a cli-mactic utopian or apotheosis-coda (as in Egmontand, in later decades, in the nales of many ofBruckner’s symphonies) suggests the possibil-ity of a different understanding. Here the reve-latory claims of such an apotheosis collapse thepreceding, nonclosed sonata into a mere matrix

or disposable delivery system that exists onlyto make possible that which is conceptuallysuperior, the Klang -telos attained in the coda.However we interpret it, it is the drastic natureof the rhetorical recapitulation proper that mustbe confronted as the central issue.

But in reecting on the Egmont Overturefrom this point of view, we might ask anotherquestion: to what extent is this a sonata move-ment at all? Everything depends on denitions.This is an especially relevant concern if ourunderstanding of the form hinges on the sup-

posed requirements of tonal practice (whileminimizing, say, the norms of thematic pat-terning). On the face of it, Beethoven’s Egmontfalls short of the most basic harmonic featureof a sonata at that time: a sufcient sense oftonal resolution within the recapitulatory space.Looming in the background of this discussionare two disputable postulates. The rst is themid-twentieth-century insistence that a “so-nata form”—qua genre—is denable over-whelmingly by harmonic criteria, in the ser-vice of which thematic elements, inappropri-ately emphasized in nineteenth-century discus-

sions of the form, were at best secondary.11 Thedeath, apotheosis and victory. It is perhaps not possible toargue denitively for one interpretation over another. Whatis most striking is that at this point in the piece the musicdoes generate extra-musical meanings (even if they cannotbe proven to represent specic dramatic events) and it isthis process which invites further reection.”

11See, e.g., the inuential article, Leonard G. Ratner, “Har-monic Aspects of Classic Form,” Journal of the AmericanMusicological Society 2 (1949), 159–68; and cf. the useful



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second is the complementary construction ofthe so-called sonata principle, identifying theone essential tonal thing that, supposedly (bymodern denition), all sonatas are normallyexpected to do (tonal resolution of nontonicexpositional materials).12

Both the harmonic view of sonata form and

the sonata principle provide conveniently adapt-able principles that can smoothly legitimizerecapitulatory freedom and seeming coda-reso-lutions of tonally recalcitrant elements. (Theycould permit one to assert, for instance, thatthe key problem in Egmont is no problem atall—nothing much to be concerned with—sincethe piece is eventually brought to tonal closurein the coda.) As I hope to have shown else-where, however, when invoked for “unusual”compositions, the often-heard “sonata-prin-ciple” claims are at best questionable, and theyare certainly inadequate unless they make in-

terpretive distinctions—as its proponents usu-ally do not—between closure inside or outsideof sonata-space.13 Regardless of the analyticalsystem favored, the larger point is this: anyanalysis of such a work as Beethoven’s EgmontOverture that does not problematize such non-normativity as a prominent feature of itsmethod, as opposed to normalizing it or ex-plaining it away as merely another neutral op-tion within a eld of overgenerous exibility,would pass too frictionlessly over its centralstructural point, its “failed” recapitulation.

The most efcient appoach to this matterlies in reconguring our conception of what a“sonata form” is. Any consideration of histori-cal sonata exemplars and their harmonic normswill tell us that a generic sonata was not prop-erly articulated on the pre-coda acoustic sur-

face of Egmont. Within sonata-space a norma-tive “sonata” remained unrealized in actualsound and material architecture. On the otherhand, it also seems clear that Beethoven wasinviting his listeners to understand what theydid hear by ltering it through the expectationsthat they had of sonatas, then observing the

veering away of this recapitulation from thoseexpectations. Thus within its rhetorical sonata-space the piece is both a sonata and not a so-nata: it is not a sonata in its literal, materialpresentation, and yet Beethoven’s audience—real, implicit, or ideal—was to understand it asa sonata insofar as the composer had appar-ently asked them to set it into a dialogue witha conceptual model not explicitly attained inthe sounding music.

This may seem obvious, but its implicationsare vast. It suggests, among other things, thatthe category of understanding needed to come

to terms with a piece of music—for example,the conceptual category, “sonata”—is differentfrom what one literally hears as the piece un-folds in real time. More broadly, it suggeststhat the concept of “form” is not primarily aproperty of the printed page or sounding sur-face. Instead, “form” resides more properly inthe composer- and listener-activated process ofmeasuring what one hears against what one isinvited to expect.

If so, then the “real form” of any such piece—and indeed, the “real piece” itself—should not

be restricted to the shape of its literally presen-tational succession of sound-events. Instead,the real form exists in that conceptual dialoguewith implicit generic norms, which exist out-side of the material surface of the printed pageand its acoustic realization. This means thatthe construct that we call “sonata form” ismore a set of tools for understanding (a set ofenabling and constraining rules for interpreta-tion) than it is a bottom-line practice that mustbe minimally satised in the workings of anygiven piece before we grant that piece, for what-ever purpose, the label of “sonata.” Judgments

concerning form, therefore, are incomplete ifthey are conned only to a description of “themusic itself.” Rather, such judgments must ex-tend to the music’s dialogical embeddedness ina web of cultural and generic expectations.

The practical challenge for the analyst is

discussion of this issue in Mark Evan Bonds, “The Para-dox of Musical Form,” chap. 1 of Wordless Rhetoric: Mu-sical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 13–52. Alsorelevant, of course, is Heinrich Schenker, Der Freie Satz[1935], trans. Ernst Oster as Free Composition (New York,

Longman, 1979), I, 133. The issue is also explored histori-cally in my “Beyond the Sonata Principle” (n. 1 above).12Here the standard citation is Edward T. Cone, MusicalForm and Musical Performance (New York: W. W. Norton,1968), pp. 76–77. The sonata principle has been recast in anumber of differing formulations. See Hepokoski, “Beyondthe Sonata Principle.”13Hepokoski, “Beyond the Sonata Principle.”



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twofold: rst, to recognize in which situationsit is reasonable to suppose that we are beinginvited by the composer to use the “sonataperspective” to process what we do hear in thepresentational succession; and second, to havegrasped as fully as possible what the enormouslymanifold generic options of the processing-con-

cept, “sonata form,” actually were in, say,Beethoven’s Vienna in the decades around1800—they should not be articulated too re-strictively. In part to acknowledge these issues,I refer to the Egmont Overture not as a “so-nata” but as a “sonata deformation”—that is, awork whose succession of events contravenescertain essential generic markers of sonata form(recapitulatory tonal resolution is one) butwhich nonetheless asks us to use sonata normsto interpret what actually does happen in thatindividual utterance.14

A Beethovenian Precedent?Op. 1, No. 2, Movt. II.

We might wish to know whether Egmont wasthe earliest example of the nonresolving reca-pitulation—for at this time anything even re-motely like this sort of tonal pattern was amost exceptional procedure. So far as I havebeen able to locate, there are one or two curi-ous antecedents to it in Beethoven’s earlierwork, and even an example or two in Mozart’swork, although each earlier case presents us

with further complications and more challeng-ing subtypes of the genre. One early instance ofwhat might be regarded as a forerunner of sucha “failed recapitulation”—though there are cer-tain ambiguities within it—occurs in the slowmovement of Beethoven’s Piano Trio in G, op.1, no. 2, composed in 1793–94 and published in1795.15 The slow movement unfolds as a deeply

problematic, sonata-related structure in E ma-jor (major VI of the trio’s G major). Before deal-ing with its recapitulation we will have to lookat its exposition.

The primary theme (P) sets out as a norma-tive, if slightly expanded, sentence in E majorand projects something of a leisurely, major-

mode dream-idyll (ex. 3).16 In m. 9 the repeti-tion of the rst theme initiates a transition ofthe “dissolving-restatement” type (one ofaround a dozen standard strategies) and pro-ceeds through a generically typical series ofevents: a modulation to V—though anticipatedhere in a premonitory B minor (not B major)—the securing in m. 18 of the new structural-dominant lock (V of B minor), and the move toa more or less conventional medial caesura inm. 23 (ex. 4), completing a much-extended half-cadence in the dominant minor, stretched outand bridged over with two measures of major-

mode caesura-ll, mm. 24–25. The secondarytheme begins in m. 26—normatively, in B ma-jor (V), though over an ominously pulsatingdominant, F , as if unable to shake loose thedominant-lock of the preceding measures. Werecall that a secondary theme’s generic goal isto secure a perfect authentic cadence in the keyof the dominant—to produce the point of es-sential expositional closure (the EEC), the rstsatisfactory perfect authentic cadence in thesubordinate key (in major-mode works before1800, almost invariably V). But what happens

here on the way to this generically obligatoryB-major perfect authentic cadence is extremelyunusual—almost unprecedented—in histori-cally signicant compositions prior to this one.

The surprising aspect of this secondary themeis that it ends not with a cadence in B major,the dominant, as promised, but with a cadence

14I have discussed the principle and implications of sonatadeformations at greater length in Sibelius: Symphony No.5, and especially in “Beethoven Reception: The Symphonic

Tradition,” chap. 15 of The Cambridge History of Nine-teenth-Century Music, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 2002), pp. 424–59. See also Darcy,“Bruckner’s Sonata Deformations” (n. 2 above).15Related movements—all three are most protably con-sidered together, as differing realizations of somewhat simi-larly posed problems (although not uniformly withnonresolving recapitulations)—include the E-major Ada-

gio of the Piano Sonata in C, op. 2, no. 3 (whosedeformational “exposition” also moves to G major) andthe E-major Largo of the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Mi-nor, op. 37.16Measures 1–9 of op. 1, no. 2, movt. II, were used as a

paradigm of a sentence with expanded cadential functionby William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of FormalFunctions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart,and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998),pp. 46 [ex. 3.16a], 47: “The extra measure of this nine-measure theme is created by a small expansion of thecadential progression [mm. 8–9 with upbeat]. (Schoenbergspeaks of similar situations as a ‘written-out ritardando.’)”



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1

6

Largo con espressione

Largo con espressione

Example 3: Beethoven, Piano Trio in G Major, op. 1, no. 2, movt. II, mm. 1–10.

nant has been lost forever. (In fact, that B majornever existed as a concretized reality, only—over its dominant—as a promise.) Instead, inm. 34, using f and d as common tones for anew dominant-seventh chord, one nds a will-ful, fortissimo push and diminuendo into Gmajor ( III of E, VI of B minor). As if pretendingthat this is not “a place where one doesn’t

belong,” the dynamics are reduced to the com-placent piano in m. 35. Thus a “false security”is restored in III.17 Surely not coincidentally

in a strange, almost “false” place, G major ( III,mm. 39, 40). The secondary theme’s anteced-ent phrase, mm. 26–31, with its uncannilylevitational opening, prolongs V of B major (sus-taining the dominant of the preceding medialcaesura, holding it open). One expects the par-allel consequent to bring this situation to B-major closure. In m. 32 the consequent sets out

to do so, still over the persistent dominant, butin the next measure, m. 33, B major decaysunexpectedly to B minor (the 6

4 position overthe dominant, recalling the B minor of the pre-ceding transition). This sets off an expressiveand structural alarm: the threat of the loss ofthe major mode at the point of essential exposi-tional closure, the EEC, and with it, the dis-solving of the seemingly secure, major-modedream-idyll announced at the movement’s out-set. (An EEC in a nongeneric minor v wouldsignify a strong reversal of expectations.)

The expressive point of what follows is clear.

The intrusive B minor (minor v), the sign ofmodal collapse, threatens something profoundlydisturbing. In m. 34 the narrative subjectcounters defensively by wresting back the ma-jor mode. But not B major: once decayed away,the generic assurance of the normative domi-

17As before (n. 8 and the discussion in the text to which itrefers), one can envision a neo-Riemannian response to asituation in which an ongoing B major that “ought” to bestable successively shifts two chromatic semitones (D be-comes D ; F becomes G) to become transformed into Gmajor—one species of chromatic 5–6 shift in which thesecond element, G major, is locally prepared by its ownV6

5. Here the speculative question is whether in the mid-1790s such a shift between what Cohn has recently called“modally matched harmonies [or ‘next-adjacencies’]. . .

[involving] dual semitonal displacements in contrary mo-tion” (in this case, within what he identied as the “West-ern” hexatonic cycle, which includes the B and G triads—“As Wonderful as Star Clusters,” pp. 217, 216) is to beinterpreted as establishing a relatedness between the twosonorities to the point where one may act as an effective“proxy” for the other. As I have suggested above, one maycertainly consider such questions to be both germane to



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22

26

30

34

espress.

the situation at hand and provocative in their implications(e.g., what might the nature and expressive function ofsuch a representation by proxy be?) without abandoning

the more central concept of a tonally non-normative expo-sition, which will eventually result in the nonresolvingrecapitulation to come.




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37

41

45

Example 4 (continued)

this would seem simultaneously to suggest an in extremis appeal to the G-major governingtonic of the outer movements and the trio as awhole. However we might choose to under-stand it, the rhetorical module is brought to an

expanded cadential progression that in m. 40closes non-normatively in G major. (Measure40 is the rhetorical equivalent of the point ofessential expositional closure, the EEC, mo-mentarily ignoring the crisis of the “wrongkey.”)

Is this the end of the exposition? This turnsout to be a crucial question, and the answer isanything but clear. Notice that the recapitula-tion begins only seven measures later, in m. 47.From one perspective, in m. 40 one might wish

to regard the elided recalling of the primarytheme in the cello as the beginning of an expo-sitional closing zone: closing themes that in-voke primary themes are anything but rare. Butif so, the allusion is eeting. Within a measurethe thematic continuity decays into a waste-



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land of successive diminished sevenths that, atbest, suggest the almost immediate inability ofthese measures to function as a normative clos-ing zone. Two interpretive possibilities remainopen here, and either conclusion may be justi-ed. The rst is that mm. 40–47, at least inretrospect, may be considered entirely as a

retransitional link, registering the misfortuneof the exposition and pushing fatalistically for-ward, with thematic anticipation, to the head-motive of Rotation 2, the recapitulation, in m.47. (On this understanding, the expositionwould end with the secondary theme’s cadencein m. 40, which is then immediately elidedwith the retransition.) The second interpreta-tion is that m. 40 starts out as something seek-ing to be a closing zone but—doubtless in reac-tion to the expositional events—dissolves al-most instantly into retransition. This leavesthe exact nal point of “exposition” open. Per-

haps that sense of futility and indecision is partof its expressive point. For our purposes thecentral thing is that the last cadence of theexposition, the EEC-substitute in m. 40, oc-curred in III, G major, the “wrong key.” Theexposition has veered off-course. How will allthis be revisited in the recapitulation?

As a rule, a recapitulation’s generic task is tosecure the point of essential structural closure(the ESC), the secondary theme’s attainment ofa perfect authentic cadence in the tonic and, inSchenkerian terms, the rst successful comple-

tion of the recapitulation’s linear descent thatmay coincide with the long-range 3̂–2̂–1̂ Urliniemotion in the upper voice of the Ursatz. Willthe harmonic twist in the secondary theme bestraightened out? If so, how? We now need toconsider the recapitulation at the crucial mo-ment, the beginning of the secondary theme,m. 67, which begins hopefully, in the tonic, Emajor, though, as had been the case in theexposition, over a pulsating dominant (ex. 5).

Predicated on sonata norms, the musical ex-perience unfolded here is that of once-shininghopes collapsing into ruins. Seeking stability

and closure in E major, the secondary theme“fails” in its generic mission—even more dras-tically than had been foretold in the exposi-tion, because the modulatory scheme nowsprouts a nal, negative element. In m. 73 thistheme’s parallel consequent sets out—seeking

E-major closure (essential structural closure,the ESC). Analogously with the exposition, inm. 74 we nd a disintegration of mode into Eminor. Within the slow movement as a whole,this inability to sustain the tonic major in thenow all-important pre-ESC region confronts uswith an image of the unfaceable—the negative

inverse of the idyllic E-major tonic, the perhapspermanent loss of the E-major wholeness pos-ited (or hoped for?) at the movement’s opening.At least for the next measure or two the trans-positional parallels with the exposition con-tinue, and we nd the corresponding quick-escape, the fortissimo and diminuendo com-mon-tone push onto C major in mm. 75–76.

Were the secondary theme deployed in a man-ner fully parallel with that of the exposition, itwould now conclude in this “false-major,” Cmajor ( VI of E). This would grasp at the recapitu-latory straws of a “sham” or “self-deceptive”

nontonic major mode, but one that at leastfullls a recognizably generic role of a balancedfth-relation to the G major at the end of theexposition’s secondary theme, although in alarger, more trenchant sense remaining non-resolving with regard to the governing tonic ofthis Largo con espressione as a whole. But inperhaps the most telling gesture of the move-ment, Beethoven proceeds to demonstrate thenon-sustainability of this “false-hope” CÊmajorby falling away from the pattern of direct trans-position from the exposition. Unexpectedly, C

major itself decays by slumping to its sub-mediant, A minor, in mm. 78–79, in whichkey, in m. 82, the secondary theme is broughtto its close in ashen dissolution: A minor (mi-nor iv of the original E major!).

We have reached a crucial point in the piece.If we had concluded earlier that the parallelmoment in the exposition was in fact the endof the exposition, then we have—following thenorm of symmetrically rotational recapitula-tions—reached the end of the rhetorical reca-pitulation. In short, we would be confrontedwith a nonresolving recapitulation, ending in

the extraordinary, “lost” place of the minorsubdominant. Is what follows, mm. 82–90 andits varied restatement in 90–100, both of whichnally reinstate EÊmajor with a perfect authen-tic cadence, a newly “expanded” or billowedout part of the recapitulation? In musical terms,



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65

69

73

76

espressivo




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80

85

90

smorz.


space? Or is this the onset of a corrective coda,à la Egmont?18 This is a difcult question, and

it begins by ruminating bleakly on the nontonic,minor-mode void (mm. 82–85)—on the shatter-ing of the dream-idyll—but eventually ends byrestoring E major (or pretending to restore it,m. 89) and nally closing the requisite ^3–^2–^1linear descent completing the Urlinie.

But, again, are mm. 82–90 and then the var-ied restatement in 90–100 to be understood asexisting within rhetorical recapitulatory space?Do they constitute a recapitulatory extensionof that which had been smothered off, not al-lowed to ourish, in the exposition’s closing-

18Some readers might initially consider also, howeverbriey, the merits of a third interpretation, namely whetherthis movement might be grasped under the paradigm of

the sonata-rondo. The relevant model here would be thepattern sometimes described as ABAB’A + coda, althoughin such manifestly sonata-oriented cases as these it is moreaccurately laid out as: exposition—recapitulation—returnof primary theme (P)—coda. As always, everything dependson the range and clarity of one’s denitions, but in thepresent situation the sonata-rondo reading seems the leastdesirable of the available interpretive options. The sonata-



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substantial cases may be made both for andagainst either view. It is true, for example, thatthe secondary-theme cadence at m. 82 is elidedwith an A-minor invocation of the primarytheme’s head motive, one, moreover, that pro-ceeds at once to exploit diminished-seventhsonorities—events that had also occurred at the

parallel point after the EEC-substitute in m. 40.On the other hand, the texture at m. 82 (pianoalone) is more suggestive of a recapturing of theopening measures of the piece rather than a

regrasping of the texture at m. 40: this wouldargue that m. 82 initiates the onset of a newreferential rotation, an unusually large coda-rotation (in this case, what I call an example ofa “discursive coda”) whose task, in part, is toruminate on what did not happen in sonata-space by correcting and setting to rights (“out-

side of the essential action”) what the sonataitself had failed to accomplish. Still, there is nodenying its equally telling relationships withideas planted in mm. 40–47, which may suggestthat mm. 82–100 could be understood, albeitwith a degree of conceptual overextension, as inpart accomplishing some kind of deformational,corrective recapitulatory function.

Readers might want to consider this ambi-guity in more detail on their own, but the mainpoint is this: at the very least, we have anonresolving secondary theme, substantiallyalienated from tonal resolution in the recapitu-

lation—thus foreshadowing what would hap-pen in Egmont—and if we choose to regard thesymmetrical m. 82 as the close of at least the rhetorical recapitulation (measuring its expanseagainst that of expositional space), then wewould also have an unequivocal nonresolvingrecapitulation. However one might choose tounderstand it, this is a tonally anguished struc-ture. My own suspicion is that its expressivepoint is not to ask us for a quick-and-easy ana-lytical solution but to invite us to experiencethe difculty of decision, the strain of the pro-

cess of structural deformation and secondary-theme “failure.”Beyond all this, there are still larger

hermeneutic questions to ponder. Broadlyspeaking, one might wish to regard the eigh-teenth-century sonata as the abstract, meta-phorical representation of a successfully car-ried-out, symmetrically disposed human action(albeit one whose specic details areunderdetermined). Within the metaphor, thataction includes such central components as theessential sonata trajectory, the long-range, suc-cessful bringing-into-being of full tonic pres-

ence within sonata-space—perhaps a represen-tation of a now-enhanced self-identity—bymeans of authentic-cadential resolution at therecapitulatory point of the ESC (linear andcadential tonic resolution at the end of thesecondary theme). Only at this point, norma-

rondo subtype in question represents an intermixture be-tween the rondo principle and the so-called sonatina (orsonata-without-development—which we call the “Type 1Sonata” in the Elements of Sonata Theory ). (In our view,an example of such a mixture is found in the second move-ment of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E , K. 543.) It isclear, however, that this kind of sonata-rondo mixture issimilar to another formal possibility: the sonatina (Type 1Sonata) with extended, P-based coda. In the Elements of Sonata Theory, these nearly identical formats are distin-guished by such factors as: (1) the presence in the sonata-rondo of a clear, separate retransition-link (RT) betweenthe end of the recapitulation and the restatement of therondo “refrain” that follows (as opposed, for instance, to asimple elision of the one into the other); (2) the seemingrondo-character, or lack of it, of the P-theme; and (3) thedegree to which the thematic integrity of the (tonic-grounded) P is maintained in the nal statement of it afterthe recapitulation (more deviations from the original modelsuggest a coda, not a rondo refrain).

Instructive along these lines—and clarifying with re-gard to the present op. 1, no. 2, movt. II situation—is theA -major second movement (Adagio molto) of Beethoven’sPiano Sonata in C Minor, op. 10, no. 2, which presentssome of the same issues without the “nonresolving” com-

plications of the Trio movement. Lacking an RT betweenthe end of the recapitulation and the onset of P (m. 91)—and presenting that P in an incomplete, “decaying,” andmuch-varied form (mm. 91–102)—this movement is bestconsidered a Type 1 Sonata (sonatina) with discursive coda(mm. 91–112), not a sonata-rondo. (Within this paradigm,“discursive codas”—or lengthy, multisectional codas,which can appear in conjunction with any sonata type andoften begin with P-based material—often also feature a“coda-to-the-coda” effect at the end.) The fuller rationaleand argumentation behind these assessments (along witha few more nuances) are provided in Elements of SonataTheory . In any event, within the second movement of theTrio, op. 1, no. 2, the potential candidate for any supposednal, post-recapitulation rondo-statement, m. 82, is begunoff-tonic (A minor), is unprepared by any retransition (it iselided directly with the nal chord of the recapitulation),

and is subject to extreme decay and variation from theoriginal P-idea. For these reasons it is not helpful to regardmm. 82–107 as participating principally in a broader so-nata-rondo structure. (In other words, there is a simplerexplanation of the form to be found other than that result-ing from a primary appeal to the sonata-rondo concept—which in any case does not affect the central “nonresolving”argument presented above.)



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1

9

14

19

Allegro ma molto moderato

Example 6: Mozart, String Quartet in D Minor, K. 173, movt. I (exposition), mm. 1–45.



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24

29

34

41




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the unusual rst movement of Haydn’s Quar-tet in G Minor, op. 20, no. 3, as an obvioustonal model for K. 173, movt. I, the former’serratic character, overstuffed with non sequi-turs and “wrong” tonal moves, may have pro-vided something by way of a general sugges-tion.22)

Coming to terms with the exposition of K.173, movt. I, requires a knowledge of the nu-merous differing exposition types of the eigh-teenth century and the manner in which theymight be subjected to internal deformations.Here Mozart seems to have produced music indialogue with what I have elsewhere called the“second type” of continuous exposition. (Lesscommon than the “two-part” exposition, a“continuous” exposition lacks a properly ar-ticulated medial caesura and hence lacks a “sec-ondary theme” proper, even though a closingtheme might be provided.) Very briey—and

passing over the oddly asymmetrical, four- +ve-measure opening modules, which aredoubtless relevant—one could take m. 18, ef-fectively standing for a premature perfect au-thentic cadence in minor v, as a somewhatreckless veering into the closure of a potentialEEC “too soon” (and possibly “too negatively”)in the composition. (Metaphorically, this is thedriving of the music into a cadential ditch.)Such a procedure is characteristic of the secondtype of continuous exposition, and the normalstrategy associated with it is immediately and

repeatedly to undo the EEC- (closure-) effect ofthe early cadence by “backing up” to providemultiple, varied reiterations of the cadentialmodule, as if again and again to defer the clo-sure-effect of the cadence until one has arrived

minor quartet movement things are different.Here the central points of cadential arrival aresplit among three nontonic keys: mm. 18, 22,and 24, A minor, minor v (an acceptable, if lessfrequent expositional option in the 1770s); m.33, E minor, minor ii (now losing sight of anynorm); and m. 42, G minor, the virtually “im-

possible” minor iv (completing the expositionalrhetorical layout proper before initiating aretransition, mm. 43–45). In sum, the custom-ary division of the exposition into two tonalzones has been multiplied into four (i, v, ii, andiv—all minor keys, note), the last two of whichare counter-generic.

What are we to make of this amboyantdeformation of expositional norms from theyoung composer? Assuming that it was intendedto make sense at all—as opposed to being merelya carnivalesque display of cheeky nonconfor-mity or, perhaps, a heavy-handed structural

ironizing of a stereotypical expression of mel-ancholy—we might propose that at the veryleast the musical tale told is that of an ex-pected structural course losing its directionalsense and straying into “lost” tonal territory.As listeners, we become witnesses to its ge-neric trajectory undermined through lament-ing circle-of-fth descents and an unpleasantlyperemptory, quasi-mechanical cadential for-mula ratifying the wrong keys at the wrongplaces. The affective image associated with suchmusical behavior—especially in a minor-key

work—would be that of a lamenting grief orlooming threat so uncontrollably powerful thatit overows or shatters the very Enlightenmentvessel that had been devised to contain anddirect it in socially acceptable ways—the tradi-tional pattern of expositional norms. We mayeven be confronting a representation of extremedistraction or a self-consuming melancholy tip-ping into madness.21 (While one cannot claim

21For this suggestion I am indebted to the more generaldiscussion of eighteenth-century conceptions of melancholy

provided by Elaine Sisman in “C. P. E. Bach, Beethoven,and the Labyrinth of Melancholy,” delivered at the Ameri-can Musicological Society, Toronto, 2 November 2000; anexpanded version was presented at Yale University, 29November 2000. (I am grateful to Professor Sisman forproviding me with a copy of this paper.) Sisman related anumber of minor-mode works or sections thereof—nor-mally in slow tempo—to the contemporary discourse sur-

rounding melancholia. Frequently associated with this sad-ness of temperament were such features as a studious frameof mind, extreme mental acuity and memory, a high de-gree of self-absorption (though occasionally leading to ap-parent surface disorder), and occasionally a labyrinthine

convolution of thought process. Many eighteenth-centurywriters took pains to distinguish it from the extreme ofgenuine madness (typically understood as more raving orviolent), but from time to time, as Sisman mentions, roomwas permitted for melancholy to slide into such states as“melancholy madness.”22I have provided a discussion of op. 20, no. 3, movt. I, in“Beyond the Sonata Principle.”



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at a properly proportional spot within the expo-sition.23

This line of argument understands m. 19 asa dgety, reactive reopening of the seemingclosure of the A-minor cadence. It initiates animplied question-and-answer dialogue betweenindividual modules, perhaps something like,

“Surely you didn’t intend to close down thisquickly in minor v?”, followed by the emphatic“Indeed I did!” of the forte reconrmation inmm. 23–24. It may be that the similarly appre-hensive, questioning reactions in m. 25 (theanxious uttering-about, piano, through thedescending circle of fths) keep the cadentialspace open by refusing to leave the main ideaat hand. But this time, mm. 25–31, the passagedestabilizes tonally and veers toward E minor,which is conrmed with another declarativestatement of the resolute hammer-cadence atm. 33: we have now lost our way.

Now abandoning the utter-reactions of mm.19 and 25, m. 33 returns to the original pri-mary-theme incipit (carried out in canon withthe cello). Even though this music reinvokessegments of the descending circle of fths, thisreturn to a variant of the rst theme is a famil-iar strategy of Mozartean closing-theme space,and it is probably best understood as a last-minute effort to “normalize” at least some as-pect of this eccentric exposition.24 (Should weinterpret m. 33 as a closing theme, we wouldbe obliged to claim that the effective EEC—the

sine qua non before closing-space may be con-sidered as having begun—had been sounded inE minor, ii, at m. 33. But by now the tonalcourse of the music has come totally unhitchedfrom normative practice. This accounts, onesupposes, for the representation of multiplyinglaments through canonic treatment.) On this

reading, the deformation of closing-theme space,mm. 33–42, ends through yet another reactiva-tion of the hammer-cadence gure, now clos-ing in m. 42 on the “impossible” G minor,minor iv. Another reading might propose,though, that the return to the unshakablecadential motive in mm. 41–42 undoes the pos-

sible earlier EEC-effect at m. 33. Such a viewwould entail the postponing of what is per-ceived to be deformational closure to m. 42(which would also cancel out the only appar-ently “closing” character of mm. 33 ff ). Moreimportant than making any unequivocal ana-lytical decision here, though, is the perceptionof the strain and deformational ambiguity towhich Mozart has submitted his materials.

Obviously, the presence of such a “failed”exposition does not augur well for a tonallysuccessful recapitulation—which begins in m.65. The recapitulation starts to differ from the

exposition two beats before m. 77 (the norma-tive pre-crux recomposition), and at m. 80 wearrive at the crux, the point at which the reca-pitulation becomes by and large a transpositionof the exposition, down a fth.25 Thus, whilenoting the occasional variant here or there (es-pecially in the rst few measures), we mayregard mm. 80–112 as revisiting mm. 10–42 afth lower (our familiar fth-transposition, dis-cussed earlier). As a result we need not provideits music in a separate example. The D-minorperfect authentic cadence at m. 88 replicates

down a fth the parallel, A-minor moment ofthe exposition (m. 18), but since this is a toniccadence it also threatens the possibility of anunacceptably early essential structural closure(ESC), a threat reiterated in mm. 92 (cf. m. 22)and 94 (cf. m. 24). As if to ee that prematureclosure, the phrase beginning in m. 95 (cf. m.25) moves the recapitulation from the existingtonic, D minor, to a new tonic a fourth lower,A minor, in m. 103 (cf. the E minor m. 33): herethe recapitulation detaches from its tonic-keymoorings. The deformational conclusion, start-ing in m. 103, brings the A minor up a third to

C minor (m. 112; cf. the G minor m. 42), clos-

23This type is dealt with in much more detail—with ex-amples—in Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of SonataTheory, chap. 4. (It is also mentioned in Hepokoski andDarcy, “The Medial Caesura and Its Role,” p. 119.) I mightonly mention that two more normative examples may be

found in the rst movement of Mozart’s Quartet in B , K.458 (“Hunt,” with multiple “stuttering” cadences—andhence no secondary theme proper—in mm. 54, 60, 66, and69, along with an effective EEC at m. 77, and a closingtheme beginning at m. 78), and Haydn’s Symphony No. 88in G. Compare n. 4 above.24Characteristic C-types and their implications are dis-cussed in the Elements of Sonata Theory, chap. 9.

25The term “crux” is taken from Ralph Kirkpatrick,Domenico Scarlatti (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1953), pp. 253–61.



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ing the rhetorical recapitulation on the “im-possible,” “lost” key of vii. The recapitulatoryspace thus touches on three tonal planes, mi-nor i, v, and vii. A retransition follows (m.113)—along with a repetition of the whole de-velopment and rhetorical recapitulation—andthe negative tonic is attained and stabilized

only in the coda (see ex. 7).One might initially be tempted to hear theforegrounded cadence effect at m. 119 as a mo-ment of D-minor closure. But it is preferable,in my view, to understand the precedingretransition (mm. 113–17) as ending with a halfcadence in D minor (m. 117) followed by twomeasures of caesura-ll, albeit on the frustrat-ing cadential gure. In the two measures pre-ceding m. 119 the cadential module is strippedback to a single instrument (it is not soundedin its usual all’unisono version in either threeor all four parts), it is sounded piano, not forte,

and the strength of its cadence effect is in partundercut by elision with the relaunch of therst-theme incipit. In context this cadence ef-fect, far from closing what has just occurred,launches something new. The corrective coda(mm. 119–36), an appendix existing outside ofsonata-space, nally brings about (or reectson) the resolution that the sonata proper wasnot permitted to accomplish. Satisfactory per-fect-authentic-cadence closure in the tonic isproduced only in m. 132, pianissimo. It is sub-sequently conrmed with two more grim, forte

reiterations, all’unisono, of the nightmarishcadential module that had so seized the wholepiece (mm. 133–34, 135–36). At the end an omi-nous fermata prolongs the silence—the void—into which this movement has nally beenthrown.

When confronting such a work by the youngMozart from 1773, one should surely be cau-tious about advancing any grand hermeneuticclaims. In this rudimentary instance it is any-thing but clear whether the seventeen-year-oldwas merely toying with received ideas—ma-nipulating short-winded, formulaic gestures in

ways that are momentarily curious—or whetherhe genuinely meant something more disturb-ing. The slow movement of the Beethoven Triofrom 1793–94, on the other hand, may strike usas more trenchant, more expressively engagedin troubling ways. In both of these cases, an

“errant” exposition led inexorably, though themechanisms of normative transposition, to a“failed” recapitulation (although in theBeethoven movement an extra, non-transposi-tional twist was added at the end). In bothmovements a counter-generic exposition waspredictive of a nonresolving recapitulation.

This is not always the case: sometimes a ton-ally problematic exposition can be rehabilitatedby corrective action taken within the recapitu-lation. In the Andantino slow movement ofMozart’s Piano Concerto in E , K. 449 (“No. 14,”from 1784), the unusual exposition proceeds ina manner that somewhat foreshadows theBeethoven Trio.26 In this B -Major Sonata move-ment the exposition’s second theme begins inthe proper key, F major (V, m. 41), but through aseries of harmonic upheavals fails to cadence inthe normative F major and pushes instead to aperfect authentic cadence in the key of A ma-

jor (locally, III; reckoned from the governingtonic, VII of B ) to conclude the exposition.(Thus: major I—“collapsing” V—and close inmajor VII.27) In the recapitulation, however (be-ginning in m. 80), Mozart interpolates a correc-tive circle-of-fths passage within the secondtheme—something of a “magic passage” (mm.103–06)—that deliciously subverts the mechani-cal transposition and makes possible the per-fect authentic cadence—the ESC—in the propertonic, B major (m. 116). Here the generic prin-ciple of formal containment trumps the pre-

dicted threat of a nonresolving recapitulation.But the reverse can also occur. Although in-stances of these things are scarce in the de-cades around 1800, it was possible for a tonallynormative exposition to become tonally derailedin the recapitulation. In such cases, a non-prob-lematic exposition nds its negative reection

26Compare also the analysis of K. 449, movt. II, in CarlSchachter, “Idiosyncratic Features of Three Mozart SlowMovements: The Piano Concertos K. 449, K. 453, and K.467,” in Mozart’s Piano Concertos: Text, Context, Inter- pretation, ed. Neal Zaslaw (Ann Arbor: University of Michi-

gan Press, 1996), pp. 315–33.27As before, of course, the issue of one key substituting foranother (that has proven “unable” to sustain itself for onereason or another) invites speculation about theoreticalmatters of chordal and tonal transformation—although inthis case the matters are not directly related to the con-cept of closed groups of hexatonic cycles “based on voice-leading efciency.” Compare nn. 8 and 17 above.



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106

113

119

126

Example 7: Mozart, String Quartet in D Minor, K. 173, movt. I (conclusion), mm. 106–36.



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28The structural and expressive usages of major and minorwithin sonatas—usages that can be highly variable—areinventoried and discussed in chap. 14 of the Elements of Sonata Theory, which lays out the hermeneutic implica-tions that undergird the present discussion.

in an unforeseen, nonresolving recapitulation—the tonal crisis intervenes late in the sonata,

not in its exposition. The locus classicus, andthe model that doubtless ratied once and forall the category of “failed recapitulation” inthe minds of later composers, was Beethoven’sEgmont Overture.

What Counts as a Nonresolution?

Differing Strengths of

“Failed” Recapitulations

By way of a conclusion I might point towardsome nuances within the larger concept at hand,

since we have been dealing only with the mostextreme examples of it, those whose rhetoricalrecapitulations end in the “wrong key.” In fact,obviously parallel structural procedures can beencountered in less tonally extravagant strains.It might help to round out the discussion byacknowledging, in very general terms, threebroad, related categories of sonatas that fallshort of fullling their generic missions inone way or another and whose deformationalaspects range from mild—even non-defor-mational—to extreme. Only the last two ofthese three categories have recapitulations that

are properly described as nonresolving.

Category One: Minor-Mode Sonatas That AreNot Liberated into the Major Mode in the Re-capitulation. This category concerns primarilythose minor-mode sonata forms that move to

the major mediant in their expositions—or later,with Beethoven and others, to the major

submediant or other major-mode key. In otherwords, these are sonatas marked by a minor-major contrast between the two planes of theirexpositions: the dark or “negative” minor-modeopening brightens into a more “positive”nontonic major in the second half. One point ofthe expositional nontonic major (normally sup-porting S and C) is to carry the possibility,though not the necessity, of being recapitu-lated in the tonic major. In this case the sonataform as a whole will have proceeded from aminor-mode opening to a major-mode close.28

(Such a possibility is more remote, althoughnot unthinkable, within sonata forms whoseexpositions move to the minor dominant, the“second-level default” key-choice for S and C.)In the category of “failure” under consideration,this expositional contrast—dark to light—isundone by the minor-minor uniformity of therecapitulation. Here the originally major-modeS and C return in minor-mode transformations.All that was modally “promised” in the secondhalf of the exposition (or at least all that ex-isted as generic potential, or perhaps even“hope”) is extinguished, measure by measure,



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in the parallel zone in the recapitulation: nega-tive-positive is replaced by negative-negative.From this perspective, we may speak legiti-mately of “sonata failure.” In these cases thatwhich a sonata can do, turn minor into major,is not done.

As it happens, this is Mozart’s virtually in-

variable practice, from his rst minor-modesonatas onward. Under no circumstances shouldwe regard the procedure as in the slightestdeformational or non-normative. Such a proce-dure was always available from the start amongthe generic options for minor-mode sonatas.Still, this minorizing of previously major-modesecondary- and closing-space can suggest anexpressive “failure” or negativity on the grand-est scale, as in the outer movements of the twoG-Minor Symphonies, K. 183 and K. 550, therst movements of the D-Minor Quartet, K.421, the A-Minor Piano Sonata, K. 310, the G-

Minor Piano Quartet, K. 478, the G-MinorString Quintet, K. 516, and so on. Beethovenwas also often attracted to this “negative” ge-neric option, although his practice is more vari-able than is Mozart’s. (When he did select thisoption—as opposed to producing the recapitu-latory S and C principally in the major-modethroughout—he sometimes began the recapitu-latory secondary-theme zone in the major onlyto extinguish it, permanently, into the minor-mode a few phrases later.) Instances of the gen-eral effect, though—closing the recapitulation

in the fatalistic, opposite mode from that whichhad concluded the exposition—may be foundwith some frequency in Beethoven. It turns upnot only in his earlier works—for example, inthe rst movements of his Piano Sonatas in FMinor, op. 2, no. 1, and in C Minor, op. 10,no.Ê1—but also in such later works as the open-ing movement of the Symphony No. 9 in DMinor, op. 125.29

The immediately required nuance is to in-sist on a distinction between tonal closure andmodal emancipation within conventional so-nata practice. To be sure, all of the sonatas in

this minor-mode category are tonally closed.They do fulll the tonal generic requirementsexpected of sonatas. As such they have emphati-cally resolving recapitulations. Nevertheless,the patetico cast of their unrelentingly minor-mode recapitulations shows a sign of pervasivenegativity or “failure” precisely at the moment

when the musical action is coming to its ownsense of successful tonal closure in the areasurrounding the ESC. This working at expres-sive cross-purposes could be explored further,but of course it is by no means a nonresolution.Rather, it is more a portrayal of an all-consum-ing, inescapably negative presence. For this rstbroad category, then, we must distinguish be-tween these two characterizations, “nonresolv-ing recapitulation” and “sonata failure.” Andagain, because of such considerations, this isclearly the mildest of the three categories.Within the period’s norms of sonata-construc-

tion it is not deformational at all.

Category Two: Suppression of a Perfect Au-thentic Cadence within Secondary-ThemeSpace (or Its Equivalent) at the End of the Expo-sition and Recapitulation.30 Stronger than therst—and now moving into the area of struc-tural deformation—this category encompassessonata forms in which both the exposition andthe recapitulation are brought to their respec-tive proper keys in the secondary thematic zone,but fail to close in that key with a perfect

authentic cadence, or, in most cases, to closeeven with an imperfect substitute. In otherwords, these are instances in which secondary-theme space is kept from cadential closure.The exposition fails to produce an EEC, and,complementarily, the recapitulation, eventhough it unfolds wholly in the proper key, iskept from producing the tonic closure of theESC, the principal goal of any sonata form.

Although a few earlier instances may befound, for instance, in Haydn (such as the rstmovement of his Quartet in G Minor, op. 20,no. 3),31 the most familiar example is provided

29A convenient inventory of such movements and otherminor-mode patterns in Beethoven has been made by Jo-seph Kerman, “Beethoven’s Minority,” in Write All TheseDown: Essays on Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni-versity of California Press, 1994), pp. 217–37.

30The phrase about “its equivalent” is provided to covercontinuous recapitulations, which lack a medial caesuraand, consequently, lack a secondary theme proper. See n.23 above.31See n. 22 above.



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by the nale of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5in C Minor, op. 67. Here the C-major exposi-tion moves to the dominant and launches asecondary theme in G major (m. 45). In fact,what is produced is a succession of themes, buteach nds itself barred from cadential closure.Beethoven here stages an exposition that seems

desperately “unable” to produce an EEC, theperfect-authentic-cadential knot that would tieup the expositional layout as a whole. Thiscadential frustration must surely be the centralpoint not only of this exposition but also of therecapitulation, in which the secondary-themezone’s “inability” plays out in the crucial C-major tonic. The whole symphony has beenstriving to ground—or better, to bring into be-ing—a secure, conrmed C major as a sign ofliberation. Here we learn, even in the nale,that C major is not going to be stabilized withinthe connes of sonata-space. Thus the multi-

modular secondary-theme zone of this reca-pitulation is quite literally nonresolving. It doesoccupy the proper key, but it is handled in away to suggest that it is incapable of bringingabout cadential resolution. Closure is conse-quently deferred to the mighty coda, which, itturns out, has its own cadential stories to tell.Parallel examples may be found in the nalesof Beethoven’s Second and Eighth Symphonies,ops. 36 and 93, in the nale of the C-MajorQuartet, op. 59, no. 3, and in numerous post-Beethovenian works, including several outer

movements in Bruckner.Category Three: Recapitulations Ending in aNontonic Key. This is the most extreme of thecategories, that in which the recapitulation’ssecond part nds itself stranded in the “wrongkey,” with or without cadential closure in thatkey. I need not discuss this possibility further,for that is where we began, with Egmont, withthe earlier Beethoven Trio (at least according toone interpretation of the two offered), and withMozart’s Quartet, K. 173, movt. I. Still, whenwe seek an understanding of the structure of

such a piece, say, as the rst movement ofBrahms’s Symphony No. 3 in F, op. 90—whoseexposition moves from I to III, F major to Amajor, then A minor—and when we notice thatthe second half of the recapitulatory space re-turns not in the tonic F major but in D major,

collapsing to D minor, major VI followed byminor vi, it is surely relevant to recognize itsmajor-mode variant of the Egmont tonal pat-tern and to recall the other predecessors of suchnonresolving structures in the years around1800 and thereafter.32 The recollection resur-faces when we observe that in the rst move-

ment of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in A Minorthe so-called Alma Theme (S) returns in therecapitulatory space not in the planned-for, lib-erating A major, but rather in the “false” Dmajor, the subdominant major. The same typeof nonresolving tonal situation occurs inGlinka’s Russlan and Ludmilla Overture; inTchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet; in the rstmovement of Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 inC Minor, op. 78; in the nale of Rachmaninov’sPiano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, op. 18; in thesecond movement of Mahler’s Symphony No.5; and in several other movements.

Much more could be added by way of nu-ance, by way of qualication, by way of thesharpening and deepening of the central topichere. I could invoke transitional categories ofnonresolution or adduce special cases that falloutside of the three main categories. But per-haps the larger point has been made: Once werecognize the persistence of any deformation-family within any existing genre system—thenonresolving recapitulation is only one amongmany within the exible genre system that wecall the “sonata”—once we attend to the gen-

esis and history of that deformation, once weponder what its generic and structural implica-

32The tonal pattern found in the rst movement of Brahms’sThird Symphony may also be understood in relation tosuch major-mode sonata forms with expositional closes inthe mediant as Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas op. 31, no. 1,movt. I, and op. 53, movt. I. While in this part of his careerBeethoven had normally “corrected” the recapitulation’sfth-related submediant (when it occurred) in such a way

as to produce the point of essential structural closure (ESC)in the tonic (see n. 5 above along with the related discus-sion in the text), this does not occur in the Brahms move-ment. From this perspective, the Brahms piece may beregarded as an instance of an “uncorrected” recapitula-tion—something on the order of the major-mode op. 53,movt. I, pattern additionally informed by the more non-normative, minor-mode Egmont prototype.



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tions might be, the deformation-concept canserve as a centering principle not only of sonataanalysis but also of the larger task of sonatahermeneutics. For individual pieces do not ex-ist in themselves alone. They cannot speakentirely for themselves. But they may be awak-

ened into meaningful utterances when we at-tempt to reconstitute their apparent dialogueswith pre-existing memory, with complex, pre-existing generic models within constellationsof competing, ever-transformingsystems.

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Kevin C. Karnes: Another Look at Critical Partisanshipin the Viennese n de siècle: Schenker’s Reviews ofBrahms’s Vocal Music, 1891–92

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