GAMUT 6/1 (2013)
© 2013 NEWFOUND PRESS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ISSN: 1938-6690
CLASSICAL MODELS, SONATA THEORY, EQUAL DIVISION OF THE
OCTAVE AND TWO NINETEENTH-CENTURY SYMPHONIC MOVEMENTS:
COMPARING ANALYTICAL APPROACHES
*
HOWARD CINNAMON
or many years, conventional wisdom about form in nineteenth-century music assumed
that thematic organization and program took precedence over harmonic structure, and that
conventional (i.e., Classical) models were limited in their influence in favor of expression. Later
studies, such as those by Edward T. Cone and Charles Rosen, emphasized harmonic structure
more strongly, revealing much about formal procedures (especially in sonata form); but over-
statements and broad generalizations posed problems for theorists seeking a balance.
1
More
recent studies of sonata form, such as those by William E. Caplin, James Hepokoski, and Warren
Darcy, have offered additional insights when applied to this music; but like earlier studies they
have focused primarily on thematic organization (although in a much more systematic way) and
thus have underemphasized characteristics illustrative of the foundational formal/harmonic
relationships that exist between many nineteenth-century pieces and those of an earlier practice.
2
*
Portions of this paper were presented in an earlier form at the 2007 meeting of the Society for Music Theory
(Baltimore, MD).
1
See Edward T. Cone, Musical Form and Musical Performance (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968); Charles
Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, rev. ed. (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1976); and
Rosen, Sonata Forms, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988).
2
See James Hepokoski, “Fiery-Pulsed Libertine or Domestic Hero? Strauss’s Don Juan Reinvestigated,” in
Richard Strauss: New Perspectives on the Composer and His Work, ed. Bryan Gilliam (Durham: Duke Univ. Press,
1992): 135–176; Hepokoski, “Beyond the Sonata Principle,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 55/1
(2002): 91–154; William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998); and Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements
of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2006).
F