"Some
18th-Century Ritornello Scripts and Their 19th-Century Revivals"
Theorists at least as far back as Tovey have noted certain
movements by Schubert and Brahms that seem anomalous, both with respect to the
rest of their works and to our general understanding of the formal conventions
of the classical Viennese instrumental music that constituted their horizon of
expectations. It is my contention that these pieces are considered sui generis
only because they have not been analyzed in light of more flexible eighteenth-century
techniques for combining ritornello and binary procedures, whether in rondos,
in concerto forms, or in concertante chamber music. This paper uses Schenkerian
analysis together with concepts drawn from historical theory to reveal structural
similarities between certain ritornello forms by Haydn, Mozart, and Vanhal on
the one hand, and Schubert and Brahms on the other. In doing so it also expands
upon previous research, notably James Webster's, that traces formal affinities
between the latter two composers. Schubert's most striking formal innovations
often arise from combining somewhat archaic mid-eighteenth-century formal procedures
with his penchant for chromaticism and for quasi-novelistic digressions (Einschaltungen,
to use the formal vocabulary of the time). Brahms adopted ritornello principles
as a formal determinant in sonata-style movements early in his career. Perhaps
not coincidentally, the Serenades opp. 11 and 16, both deliberately classicizing
works, contain movements that, in their amalgamation of rounded-binary, rondo,
and concerto procedures, exhibit a refreshing formal variability akin the that
of early Classicism (I use that term merely as a chronological marker). The paper
draws comparisons between specific pieces (e.g., the finale of Mozart's Sonata
in C Minor, K. 457, and the first movement of Brahms's Trio, op. 101) not for
the purpose of claiming an empirically verifiable instance of influence but rather
to demonstrate strikingly similar fusions of ritornello and sonata principles.
On a more general level, this paper is intended as a contribution to Schenkerian
studies, specifically towards the application of the theory not only to the analysis
of individual pieces but also to broader considerations of rhythm, style, form,
and genre, concerns shared by such scholars as Jackson, Rothstein, Schmalfeldt,
Charles Smith, and Peter Smith.
“The
Major Dominant in Minor-Mode Sonatas:Brahms’s Fourth Symphony and Its Predecessors”
The paper investigates an intriguing category of minor-mode sonata form: movements
that tonicize the dominant in its major mode, thus proving exceptions to the generalization
concerning the difference, in the minor system, between V as chord (major, with
its strong resolution tendency) and as key (minor, without that destabilizing
leading tone). As a key relation, such modal mismatching of minor tonic with major
dominant tends to impose an artificial strain on the very nature of the minor
system; for this reason it was rigorously avoided in the Classical period. It
emerged as a viable alternative only in the post-Classical sonata, in which (chromatic/aesthetic)
context its very problematic nature might be turned to expressive advantage. I
will explore a variety of ways in which the tensions arising from the major dominant’s
inherent instability—expressed as a leading-tone pull towards the tonic—can
affect the sonata’s tonal course and middleground voice-leading basis, in
extreme cases fundamentally transforming the form’s very nature. Discussion
of several examples from Schubert to Brahms will show how this exposition type
gives rise to a range of associated tonal-formal and voice-leading categories,
including the “three-part Ursatz,” “failed exposition,” “classicizing”
modal correction within the dominant-centered S, “premature” tonic return/false
exposition repeat, and (in extremis) the fully-fledged “ternary sonata”
(after Jack Adrian) with structural tonic return at the start of the development—the
latter represented by the first movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, famously
characterized by Ernst Oster as a “borderline case of sonata form.”
The paper concludes with a more detailed analysis of this movement, where (in
this and other ways) the tonicized major dominant finds its furthest-reaching
structural consequences.