Keys to the Drama: Nine Perspectives on Sonata Forms.

Proksch, Bryan

Keys to the Drama: Nine Perspectives on Sonata Forms. Edited by Gordon Sly. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009. [xviii, 229 p. ISBN 978-0-75-465606-7. $99.95]

While at first glance it may be easy to dismiss this collection as little more than the obligatory re-hashing of sonata form--potentially worsened by its ostensible grounding in Schenkerian analysis--Gordon Sly has managed to present a solid group of essays on a surprisingly varied number of formal topics. Thankfully there is little ax-grinding in the essays and Sly's authors are not as committed to lengthy exegesis by way of complicated graphs as might be expected; both are a refreshing change of pace that makes the book more accessible to non-Schenkerians and more relevant to a broader portion of the musicological community.

Tucked away as the last essay of the collection, Brian Alegant's examination of compositional tropes in A-major developments throughout the "long" nineteenth century stands as the riskiest essay in the book from a methodological perspective. However, with great risk comes great reward, and in this case the reward is one of the most convincing arguments on key-specific events to have been written in recent memory. He concludes that the dominant (E major) is a sharp-side (i.e. up the circle of fifths) boundary in these works with the exception of the mediant (C-sharp minor), and that the developments can be roughly grouped into "stationary" (i.e. little harmonic motion such as in Schubert's Piano Sonata, op. 120/i) and flat-side (i.e. motion down the circle of fifths such as in Beethoven's Sonata for Violin and Piano, op. 12/2/i) approaches to tonality. Both of these groupings have their own set of compositional expectations, as demonstrated by Alegant. He also provides evidence for predicting the type of harmonic motion to be encountered based on the section's opening phrase.

Alan Gosman's contribution on Beethoven's sketchbooks examines the ways in which Beethoven crafted his thematic ideas with specific reference to the Second and Eighth Symphonies. He demonstrates that Beethoven did not regard the "final" version as seen in the opening of his movements as necessarily the only version of the theme to be used. In the case of the opening movement of the Eighth Symphony, Beethoven's five initial sketches led to not only the theme seen at the outset of the work, but also to variants such as the fff outburst at mm. 190-197. In essence, Gosman challenges the notion that the first appearance of a theme is necessarily definitive and instead sees the possibility that multiple versions of a theme are just as likely to be substitutes as they are outgrowths or developments.

Two essays deal with the music of Schubert. Evan Jones writes an informative essay on coherence in the "Arpeggione" Sonata, D. 821, using an appealing mixture of Schenkerian and Schonbergian approaches. He notes "tonal problems" in the music and resolves them using voice-leading graphs, while his analyses also take non-pitch material into account. The article could serve as a textbook on using the right methodological tool for the job as opposed to sticking to a single approach. The collection's editor contributes his own thoughts on how Schubert's approach to sonata form evolved during the 1818-23 period, a time when the composer was highly experimental with the form. Sly convincingly concludes that Schubert's works during this era demonstrate his experimentation with the relationship between thematic and structural recapitulatory devices. In the end these experiments led to his writing of a recapitulation that neither uses the primary theme nor is in the tonic (the Quartett-Satz, D. 703).

The collection's two essays on Mozart are, in my opinion, too self-conscious about terminology, to the point where tautology overshadows otherwise interesting theses. Matthew Shaftel attempts to reconcile Mozart's instrumental sonata forms with his operatic practice using the Marriage of Figaro's Act I trio as a case study. His argument on the interaction of drama and form makes many good points; however, he carries too much methodological baggage with him for my taste. Perhaps this is because the publisher did him no favors: many of his tables are simply too small to read comfortably (e.g. Figures 2.3 and 2.6). I also found myself disagreeing with the crux of Neil Minturn's analysis of K. 311/i. He argues that the movement is both a reversed and a subdominant recapitulation acting "in excessive haste" throughout. While it clearly is reversed (secondary theme recapitulated at m. 79 and the primary theme at 99) and hasty, I simply do not hear the recapitulation's beginning until m. 79 in spite of the stable subdominant section focusing on the closing group in mm. 58-70 (where Minturn locates the recapitulation). Having said this, his essay succeeded in engaging me and it forced me to re-hear the movement while providing ample food for thought on the nature of formal processes.

The remaining three essays each contribute to long-standing issues in analysis. Frank Samarotto examines the "divided tonic" in the first movement of Beethoven's Op. 132, whose sonata form is, like so many of Beethoven's late works, anomalous in the extreme. William Marvin and Edward Laufer both strive to reconcile border-line or "deformed" sonata structures with the archetype. The former works at the extremely large scale, examining Mahler's Third Symphony, while the latter moves to the smaller scale, writing on Chopin's Fourth Ballade. On the whole the book's essays are informative and well-written; Sly is to be commended for making good on his title's promise of providing nine differing perspectives on sonata form.

Bryan Proksch

McNeese State University, Lake Charles, Louisiana