In the theory of sonata form it is often asserted that the other movements of a sonata
relate to the sonata-allegro in one of two ways. Charles Rosen views them as really
‘sonata forms’ while Edward T. Cone asserts that the sonata-allegro is the ideal to which
other movement structures ‘aspire’. This is particularly seen to be the case with other
movement forms which commonly occur in works thought of as sonatas. As a sign of
this the word ‘sonata’ is sometimes prepended to the name of the form, particularly in the
case of the ‘sonata-rondo’ form. Slow movements, in particular, are seen as being as
similar to the first-movement sonata from, with differences in phrasing and less emphasis
on the development.
Two musicologists, James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, have presented an analysis of
the sonata-allegro form and the sonata cycle. They argue that these both play on genre
expectations and that it is possible to categorise both by the compositional choices made
to respect or depart from conventions. Their study focuses on the normative period of
sonata practice, namely the period when the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert and their close contemporaries were being written. They project this practice
forward to the development of the sonata-allegro form into the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
Critique of sonata form
In the late 1700s as sonata form began to emerge, the emphasis was on a regular layout of
works for performers and listeners. Since most works received, at most, one reherarsal,
and seldom more than a few performances, this accessibility of layout was considered
important. Emphasis was on effects within the course of a strongly framed work.
A curious aspect of sonata form during the classical era was that the leading contributors
to its development, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, all seemed to have had very little to
say about it. One might imagine that, during all of his various experiments and
innovations with sonata form, Beethoven might have remarked to a colleague at least
once about what he was doing but, if so, it was never recorded.
It was only well after sonata form had been firmly established by the classical composers
that it became a central topic of musical criticism. Sonata form was originally described
by an Italian theorist as ‘a two part form’ where each part was repeated. By the early
nineteenth century, Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven, described it in terms of themes, a
description still used today. The description now most commonly applied to sonata form
today was outlined by Antonin Reicha in 1826 and codified by Adolf Bernhard Marx in
1845 and by Czerny in 1848. Each of them elaborated rules for composing and intended
the outline to be as much prescriptive as descriptive.
In the 1800s the sonata form assumed a place next to the fugue as a cardinal musical
structure and works were laid out in increasingly complex ways to use the sectional
nature of the sonata form. In this period E.T.A. Hoffman and Robert Schumann