proselytised for the use of the sonata form as the poetic means for expressing pure music,
unallied with words or other arts.
The late nineteenth century was the pinnacle of the idea of the sonata form as the means
of containing the huge number of influences in music. Hanslick argued that formal
comprehensibility rested on the use of the sonata form and he criticised what he regarded
as radical innovations by Richard Wagner. The critical dialogue between explosive
trends in Wagner and Liszt, and implosive trends in Brahms, reached outwards into
politics, art and science for metaphors. There was a great deal of internal tension, even
among composers, between the formal rules and the desire for expression. Tchaikovsky
berated himself for not being able to produce highly structured symphonies.
The early twentieth century saw an attack on the extended sonata form, and a search by
many composers for more organic and more compressed sonata forms. Critics such as
Olin Downes proclaimed the idea that the sonata form’s vigour was an analogy for social
and artistic vigour and a defence against empty works. At the same time adherence to
established structures took on a different meaning in Soviet Russia where composers who
failed to compose along established lines were accused of ‘formalism’, as opposed to the
established sonata forms which were called ‘natural’ and ‘realistic’. At various times
even prominent composers such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev were denounced for their
music.
Charles Rosen, in ‘The Classical Style and Sonata Forms’, has stated his understanding
as to why the particular arrangements of keys and themes used in classical sonata form
have held such importance for classical composers and their listeners. Rosen conceives
the classical era’s sonata form movement as a kind of dramatic journey through the
system of musical keys. Modulations that move upwards in the circle of fifths (in the
direction of the sharp keys) increase musical tension, and modulations that move
downwards reduce it. Sonata form first increases tension through the move to the
dominant (the crucial musical event of the exposition) then increases tension further in
the development through the exploration of remote keys. The recapitulation resolves all
this tension by returning everything to the tonic. He also argues that, over time, this idea
would become the basis for all musical movements, regardless of their formal plan.
The use of the cycle of fifths makes sense of the following observations about the
deployment of keys in the classical sonata form. Uses of keys other than the dominant
for the second subject group generally go still higher than the dominant in the circle of
fifths. Occasionally, the reappearance of the opening material at the beginning of the
recapitulation is in the subdominant key (for example, in Mozart’s piano sonata in C
major K 545) which serves the same resolving function as the tonic. Several
developments often also reach the subdominant key with equivalent resolving function.
The later twentieth century saw the rise of postmodern and literary criticism, critical
theory, narratology, feminism and other identity politics, and film theory, all of which
was applied to sonata forms. Susan McClary in her controversial ‘Feminine Endings’
(1991) describes how sonata form may be interpreted as sexist or misogynist and