Sonata Forms

Freedom in a recognizable recapitulation can go no further than the marvellous modulations with which Beethoven trans forms the first group; and anybody inclined to cavil at the exact recapitulation of no less than ioo bars comprising the transition and second group, may be surprised to learn that this is, by the clock precisely the same length as Isolde's Liebestod (vide RHYTHM) and that in the Liebestod Wagner exactly recapitu lates, without transposition, the last movement of the love-duet in a previous act. Recapitulation is as inveterate in musical form as symmetry is in architecture; and nobody understood this better than the first and most uncompromising realist in the application of music to drama.

Other Movements.

A thorough understanding of the style and methods of first movements makes all the rest easy. As to slow movements, the first thing that must be realized is that if a theme conceived in an average quick tempo be played four times as slow it will take four times as long. Some composers, and even some teachers, do not seem to have learnt this remarkable fact. In the music of a master slowness means bigness. The first 16 bars of the slow movement of Beethoven's D minor sonata (Op. 31, no. 2) look like, and are, a single binary sentence closing into the 17th bar. But the all-seeing eye that takes this in at a glance many miss the important fact that that binary sentence takes a whole minute by the clock. Quavers at 96 is a very good metronome-tempo for this movement, and it gives exactly 16 of those bars to a minute. The metronome at 72 to a bar gives a good, moderate tempo for the finale. Now, see how far one minute takes us in the finale. The simple binary first sen tence of the adagio takes as long as the two closely-printed pages from the beginning of the finale to the middle of its cadence theme! Thus in the slow movement of Beethoven's fourth sym phony (another case of 16 bars to the minute) the 15 bars begin ning in E flat minor and dwelling in G flat (bars 50-64) are a very spacious development; and so are the 7 bars in the middle of the slow movement of the trio in D major, Op. 7o, no. I. Such pas sages are ample developments if they modulate widely and con tain important changes of rhythm, instead of merely dwelling on the dominant before the return of the main theme as in the slow movement of the D minor sonata.

No wonder that in any movement slower than andante the full sonata form is unusual and of gigantic effect. The full-sized

rondo-form (see RoNno) as in the case of the fourth sym phony just mentioned, is still more voluminous in a slow tempo. Movements of more normal size may be in A, B, A form, or sonata-form without development (Mozart's favourite form) ; or may consist of a theme with five or six variations and a short coda. Haydn's form of variations on two alternating major and minor themes is sometimes used by him in slow movements, and sometimes (in small works) as the first movement or as finale. (See VARIATIONS.) The finale is often in first-movement form, but will, in such cases, have a much simpler texture. The last part of a work that moves in time will always relieve the strain on the attention.

Hence the large number and importance of rondo-finales ; and hence the paradox that both Haydn and Beethoven found the fugue an excellent form for a finale. For the fugue, while con tinually stimulating and exercising the mind by means of details, makes no claim on the listener's memory over long stretches in a major composition.

The first movement, slow movement and finale have thus an unlimited dramatic scope. A purely lyric or dance movement added to such a scheme would in itself be dramatic by contrast, as a song may be a dramatic element in a play. This justifies the dance-form of the Mozart-Haydn minuet and trio, of which Beethoven accentuated the dance-character when he expanded it to the scherzo (q.v.). Haydn's very earliest minuets show an in veterate irregularity of rhythm which stamps them even sooner than his other movements, as dramatic. Mozart's minuets are smoother, but he can pack operas into them without bursting the bounds of melodic forms. The minuet of his E flat quartet, for example (K. 428), has five distinctly expressed themes; and its trio, which in contrast has only one theme, moves, however, in four distinct new keys.

The Sonata as a Whole.

The full scheme of a sonata con sists, then, of these four movements, the minuet or scherzo being either second or third. Two movements, suitably contrasted, will make a sonata, even if (as in Beethoven's Op. 54) neither of them is in full first-movement form. But it is exceptional for a mature work to claim the title of sonata on merely lyric forms. And in the case of quartets, the feeling of the classical masters is that when so many as four players are assembled it is a waste of opportunity to give them less than a four-movement work to play.