Back and Forth from Egmont: Beethoven, Mozart, and the Nonresolving Recapitulation
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JAMES HEPOKOSKI Egmont: Beethoven, Mozart Back and Forth from Egmont: Beethoven, Mozart, and the Nonresolving Recapitulation JAMES HEPOKOSKI In a world of contending analytical systems, My plan here is less ambitious. I shall merely several of which have settled into the comforts call attention to some elementary analytical of orthodoxy, what does it mean to confront points about a few works of Beethoven and of formal structures adequately? At times it can Mozart and inquire into their ramications for be a matter of nding a fresh perspective that a more productive hermeneutics. This article encourages us to ask questions that might oth- is primarily neither about Beethoven and Mozart erwise be overlooked, neutralized, or dismissed nor about the analyses themselves. Instead, it within current paradigms. What would it re- is an exercise in a way of framing questions, of quire to seek a different perspective, to proceed pursuing implications, of registering the pro- from a new site of questioning? vocative corollaries that even simple observa- In what follows I shall glance at a few ideas tions can generate. that we might use in sonata-form analysis—to My point of departure—the initial elemen- suggest some features of a perhaps unaccus- tary observation—is noticing the curiosity, in tomed mode of thinking about this topic. Along the way this may entail some unfamiliar con- cepts, terms, and denitions, all of which are in more detail each aspect of the terminology and style of basic to the analytical and interpretational the hermeneutics that underpin this article. Put another way, my goal here cannot be to derive this system but method that I call Sonata Theory. Laying out only, within certain limitations, to demonstrate the meth- the justication for each concept would be a odology in action. Thus I hope to suggest some of the different enterprise altogether, requiring many practical results to which it leads and to refer readers to the more elaborate discussions of the basic principles that separate discussions. And in any event, that will soon appear in the Elements of Sonata Theory . I should aspect of the project is carried out elsewhere. 1 perhaps mention two additional points. First, while there are points of contact between the present article and the forthcoming book, this article, taking up a central issue and several examples in more detail, is not an extract from 1James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata the latter. Second, this essay was conceived as one of a Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eigh- complementary pair of articles. Its sibling is “Beyond the teenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University Sonata Principle,” Journal of the American Musicological Press, forthcoming). Elements of Sonata Theory takes up Society 55 (2002), 91–154. 19th-Century Music, XXV/2–3, pp. 127–54. ISSN: 0148-2076. © 2002 by The Regents of the University of 127 California. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. 19TH some sonata-form compositions, of what I call tional generic mission of tonal closure. Rare in CENTURY MUSIC the nonresolving recapitulation. The term is the decades around 1800, this phenomenon is not self-explanatory. From the outset we have easy to identify, but the conceptual and inter- to think about denitions. This use of the word pretive problems swirling around it are numer- recapitulation refers to what I distinguish as ous and challenging. the rhetorical recapitulation, a stretch of com- positional space normatively recognizable as The Overture to EGMONT: Nonresolution, by and large symmetrical in layout to the expo- Deferral, and Post-Sonata Attainment sition-pattern, its thematic and textural model. We may begin by reminding ourselves of what (It is sometimes useful to distinguish this rhe- is surely the locus classicus of the nonresolving torical recapitulation, a matter of thematic- recapitulation: Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, modular arrangement, from the completion of op. 84 (1810). Here the exposition’s tonal plan the linear-tonal argument—a tonal resolution — is regular, moving from minorÊi to major III for which may be understood to concern itself with the secondary theme (from F minor to A ma- harmonic matters.) Although a range of jor). Moreover, the secondary theme’s generic recapitulatory deviations from the referential goal, like that of all secondary themes of this pattern are possible—deletions, reorderings, period, is to secure a perfect authentic cadence telescopings, expansions, recompositions of in- in the new key—to produce what I call the dividual sections—within customary practice point of essential expositional closure (the EEC). expositions and rhetorical recapitulations are I understand the EEC as the rst satisfactory usually kept roughly commensurate with each perfect authentic cadence in the subordinate other. In a nonresolving recapitulation the com- key that proceeds onward to differing material. poser has crafted this rhetorical recapitulatory (Demonstrating what is meant by satisfactory revisiting, or new rotation,2 of previously or- would lead us astray here. This is a compli- dered expositional materials to convey the im- cated and fundamental issue within Sonata pression that it “fails” to accomplish its addi- Theory.) For now, we need only observe that its corresponding moment in the recapitulation is the point of essential structural closure, the 2 By a rotational process I mean an ordered arrangement of ESC. This is expected to be a perfect authentic diverse thematic modules that is subjected to a (usually varied or altered) recycling, or several recyclings, later on cadence in the tonic, thus completing the es- in the work. Expositions thus provide an ordered, referen- sential structural trajectory of the musical pro- tial rotation through a set of materials that is recycled, cess at hand. In other words, the ESC marks with alterations, in the recapitulatory rotation. In the de- cades around 1800 developments may also be fully or par- the attainment of a resolving recapitulation, tially rotational (including the possibility of half-rotations, one with a satisfactory articulation of closure blocked rotations, and the like), although nonrotational in the tonic. The outlines of this are indicated developments are also a possibility. The concept is elabo- rated further in Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata in the diagrams in g. 1a–b, which provide an Theory, which also includes a discussion of the utility of overview of the generalized conception of so- the specic term, “rotation.” For considerations of rota- nata form under the paradigm of Sonata Theory. tions a century later, see Hepokoski, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. (P, TR, S, and C stand for primary theme, tran- 23–26, 58–84; “The Essence of Sibelius: Creation Myths sition, secondary theme, and closing theme; and Rotational Cycles in Luonnotar,” in The Sibelius Com- MC stands for the medial caesura [the frequent panion, ed. Glenda Dawn Goss (Westport: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 121–46; and “Rotations, Sketches, and [Sibelius’s] midexpositional, cadential break in a two-part Sixth Symphony,” Sibelius Studies, ed. Timothy L. Jack- exposition]; PAC stands for a perfect authentic son and Veijo Murtomäki (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- cadence.)3 sity Press, 2001), pp. 322–51. See also Darcy, “The Meta- physics of Annihilation: Wagner, Schopenhauer, and the Ending of the Ring,” Music Theory Spectrum 16 (1994), 1– 40; “Bruckner’s Sonata Deformations,” in Bruckner Stud- 3For the MC and two-part exposition, see Hepokoski and ies, ed. Timothy L. Jackson and Paul Hawkshaw (Cam- Darcy, “The Medial Caesura and Its Role in the Eigh- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 256–77; and teenth-Century Sonata Exposition,” Music Theory Spec- “Rotational Form, Teleological Genesis, and Fantasy-Pro- trum 19 (1997), 115–54. For considerations of the addi- jection in the Slow Movement of Mahler’s Sixth Sym- tional concepts, see Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of phony,” this journal 25 (2001), 49–74. Sonata Theory, from which gs. 1a–b are taken. 128 a. Exposition only JAMES HEPOKOSKI Essential Expositional Trajectory (to the EEC) Egmont: Beethoven, Mozart MC, nal PAC cadence “continuation modules,” or: EEC series of energy-gaining modules . Relaunch: C TR = “energy-gain” S + “acceptance” of P Post-cadential “Appendix” or set of “accessory ideas.” May be 1 2 Launch: “new key” multisectional (C , C , etc.) and of P usually piano varying lengths. Usually forte or often lyrical, etc. gaining in rhetorical force. often forte non-tonic key proposes the in V either modulatory (or, if P was in minor, in III or in v) main idea for or non-modulatory the sonata tonic key Exposition, Part 1 Exposition, Part 2 b. The entire structure Essential Sonata Trajectory (to the ESC) interruption MC, EEC nal cadence Development: often P– or P–TR dominated (perhaps “rotational”) S C MC, ESC nal V as “restart” cadence chord Coda V or III P TR P TR S C often recomposed I I I I (emph: IV?) (“tonal resolution”) Exposition Development Recapitulation (One central mission: laying out (S, as agent, carries out the central generic the strategy for the eventual attainment task of the sonata—securing the ESC: of the ESC: a “structure of promise”) a“structure of accomplishment”) Figure 1a–b: The Generic Layout of Sonata Form (Exposition and Entire Movement). 129 19TH In the exposition of the F-Minor Egmont Beethoven for answering expositional mediants CENTURY MUSIC Overture the EEC is produced unequivocally with recapitulatory submediants (most nota- with a perfect authentic cadence in III (A ma- bly, in the Piano Sonatas in G, op. 31, no. 1, jor) in m. 104. (Example 1, only a melodic line, movt. I; and C, op. 53, movt.