Symposium 2000

Self Composition and Sonata Form:

A Feminist Journey through Beethoven's Musical Structure

Katie J. Graber
Senior
Goshen College 2000


Traditional analysis of Beethoven's use of Sonata Allegro form tends to focus on harmonic or melodic movement and key relationships. This study stretches such investigations to include questions of historical context and philosophic motivations that drive a composer to structure music in a certain way. Ultimately this leads to an inquiry about how these traditions affect us as listeners, and more specifically how they relate to gender issues in a musical tradition primarily made up of male composers.


Music of the 1700s is often characterized as highly structured and balanced. A favorite form for pieces of many kinds was the sonata form, which relies heavily on the basic movement between different tonalities (especially tonic and dominant or relative major). Ludwig van Beethoven wrote over 30 sonatas for piano alone and used the structure for symphonies and many other instrumental works. Most other composers of the classical time period also used sonata form, and music historians have spent much time discussing why this might be so. Some historians pose this question strictly within a musical world: How did earlier musical structures give rise to sonata form? Others ask what it was in the surrounding historical context that made sonata form appealing.
William Henry Hadow and Charles Rosen are two historians who talk primarily about musical context. Hadow sets his discussion in the framework of classical composers' movement away from Baroque forms. He says that when Beethoven and his contemporaries chose ternary form over Baroque binary, typified in the dance suite, they chose a structure that was then used successfully into the twentieth century. This was only possible, he says, because ternary not binary was open to evolution and progress (13). Melodic themes and their relationships to different key areas (1st theme in tonic, 2nd theme in dominant or relative major) are crucial to understanding sonata form as ternary. Hadow says that Haydn and Mozart's use of the same melodic material for both the first and second subject was indicative of their influence from binary form. But Beethoven, who was "a much more daring innovator, as well as a much greater master of structure, than either of his predecessors" never committed such an atrocity, "since such a scheme would only help to stereotype an outworn and obsolete form" (61). The melodic material of the two themes makes up the exposition, melodic expansion on those themes constitutes the development and a return to the themes makes up the recapitulation. Ternary form's use of different melodic material allowed for variety while its strict key relationships kept unity throughout.
Charles Rosen, on the other hand, sees harmonic rather than melodic material as central to sonata analysis. He says that "the fact is that while the placing, number, and character of the themes, at least from Scarlatti to Beethoven, have in an importance which ought not to be underestimated, they are in no sense the determining factors of the form" (30). In fact, although Beethoven might not explicitly use the existing first theme in the next key area, often the second theme "is clearly a variant of the opening theme" (31). The key areas rather than the melodic themes can be seen as constituting a two-part movement: I-V in the exposition and V-I in the development and recapitulation. It was the Romantic conception of structure through melodic terms that yielded analyses such as Hadow's "in spite of elevating the purely melodic aspect of music to a position it never held in the eighteenth century" (31). Dealing with the problem of key relationships, then, was much more central to the composers' works.
Rosen hastens to point out that neither this alternative nor Hadow's analysis appropriately show the relation of structure to content in a musical work. Simply talking about structure without talking about specific pieces and their musical content is "so rigid that the material is only there to fill a pre-existing mold" (33). An example he gives of a more integrative approach is Schenker's linear analysis, which concedes that "the notes of a tonal composition have a significance beyond the immediate context in which they are found" (34). Each note is a part of the larger structure that is gravitating toward the tonic. Rosen summarizes Schenker's analysis by saying that "underlying every piece, and mirrored on all levels of its facture, is a simple cadential formula" (34). In this view, the content and the form of a musical piece are interdependent. Also, it admits that musical compositions are influenced by historical forces, since "the cadence is the basic structural element in all Western music from the twelfth century until the first quarter of the twentieth" (34). Music, specifically the sonata form, did not arise from itself but relies on what the composer knows our collective Western ear wants to hear.
Even as Rosen pushes us to look at historical situation, though, the history he presents us is purely musical. He and Hadow both show music as progressing logically from one form to the next; Hadow traces the sonata form through counterpoint and binary form while Rosen upholds Schenker's belief in the importance of the cadence. Reactions to new key relationships and hierarchies are seen through the eyes of musicians and listeners only. But there was much more going on in the classical composers' world than musical modulation, and to understand the music produced in that time, we must ask questions about history outside the musical world. What is it about Beethoven's surroundings that caused or allowed him to be attracted to and write in sonata form, regardless of its binary or ternary qualities? Or, as Susan McClary says, "whose images of pleasure or beauty, whose rules of order should prevail" (28)? And, what continues to be so appealing to us in Beethoven's sonatas now?
Christopher Ballantine looks to Beethoven's historical surroundings in his investigation of Beethoven's Hegelian impulses. Hegel was born in the same year as Beethoven, and his historical views take away any discomfort caused by ambiguities, by neatly categorizing history into the synthesis/antithesis opposition. Logic and balance, with a high regard for forward progression (of both history and Self) reigned in that era's view of the world. Beethoven portrayed precisely these sentiments in the sonata form. Ballantine says that sonata form "is a way of musical thinking which generates contradictions between (say) opposing tonalities, themes, [and] rhythmic characters . . . Sonata dramatizes the principle whereby something may become something else under the driving force of contradiction" (35). The subject-areas, he says, are different ways of looking at reality, the development is reason working out the contradictions, and the recapitulation is the resolution. The recapitulation is the most important section, the synthesis. It gives a piece "the meaning to which the exposition pretended, but denied" (37). Beethoven's importance, then, is "his articulation in music of the principle of dialectic in all its rich and splendid logical and affective significance" (34). It was the prevalence of the Hegelian dialectic (or as McClary might say, Hegel's images of beauty and pleasure) and its surrounding philosophies that made possible the structure of the sonata.
When we put Hegel's history into more personal terms, we can see the sonata form as a journey of the Self through Other-ness to arrive again at Self. Theodore Adorno explores this Enlightenment-guided view of what and how the Self can become. I was introduced to Adorno through Rose Rosengard Subotnik's book, Developing Variations.
Subotnik follows Adorno's Hegelian analysis of Beethoven through his second period work. He (like Ballantine) says that the very presence of the Hegelian tradition in his society gave rise to the objective structure of sonata form. Beethoven, or his musical subject, is able to express himself (and I do mean himself) subjectively through this concrete physical musical form. According to Adorno, Beethoven presents the subject in the exposition, he "goes out" into the world on his own accord during the development and arrives at a slightly (necessarily) changed yet essentially the same Self in the recapitulation (Subotnik 20). This opposition is set up not between views of reality, but between different stages in the forging of the subjective Self.
In the later period, then, Adorno sees Beethoven struggling with the contradiction of a person's subjective freedom to create himself by himself in the midst of objective external reality. The very fact of outside forces not created by the subject destroys his complete autonomy. In terms of musical structure, this can be demonstrated by the fact that "the principle of reprise, for example, arises from no logical necessity within the subject." This structural inevitability in the sonata form had to have originated elsewhere. It was this realization that led to Beethoven's developments becoming more forceful, disproving "the illusion that part and whole can coexist freely in his sonata movements" (Subotnik 23). In the book Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, we hear a description of Beethoven't contemporaries' reaction to his later music. Subotnik says that Mann and Adorno corresponded closely during the writing of this book, so we can take this quotation to reflect Adorno's sentiments as well: "In the works of the last period they stood with heavy hearts before a process of dissolution or alienation, of a mounting into an air no longer familiar or safe to meddle with . . . an excess of introspection and speculation" (52). Adorno believes that Beethoven's consciousness of the contradiction between external influence and the Self is true to reality, but no one knew what to do with such ambiguities. Perhaps we are still uncomfortable with such questioning of the Self-formed Self, and with contradictions in general. The images of beauty we know are still informed by logic, balance, and control.
Adorno's opposition between the subject of the exposition and the Other of the development is slightly different than some analyses, which set up the contradictions between the first and second themes of the exposition. The theme1/theme2 opposition can also be portrayed as a sort of Hegelian story: Self meets Other in the exposition, they converse during the development, and are restated in the recapitulation. A problem arises, though, when one sees that only the Other changes in the recapitulation. This problem grows when we admit that the Other in all its difference from the Self is consistently feminine in our (and certainly Beethoven's) society. In fact, many people overtly characterize the first theme as masculine and the second as feminine. Susan McClary quotes theorist A. B. Marx (from 1845) as follows: "The second theme, on the other hand, serves as contrast to the first, energetic statement, though dependent on and determined by it. It is of a more tender nature, flexibly rather than emphatically constructed ú in a way, the feminine as opposed to the preceding masculine" (13). In Adorno's analysis we see some evidence of compromise on both parts, but the Enlightenment's forging of oneself always means conquering the Other. And it is this conflict that McClary says "is essential to the furthering of the plot, . . . [the Self] must leave the cozy nest of its tonic, risk this confrontation, and finally triumph over its Other" (69). So the Self does not merely happen upon his feminine contradiction, rather he relies on the overwhelming of her opposition to maintain his Selfhood.
For this reason, perhaps, Carolyn Abbate discusses and questions our contemporary impulse to view everything as narrative in her book Unsung Voices. First of all, she asks what good it does: "sonata 'dialogue' is music talking to itself about itself" (24). Sonata form as a narration of a Self and its adventures presents some pragmatic as well as abstract dilemmas. Abbate asks, practically, how can "plot interpretations deal with repetition of the exposition, or the altered repetition of recapitulation" (22)? More philosophically, narrative analyses of music depend on a progressing, evolving successions of events, "whether these are physical deeds, or changing internal emotional states" (21). Our obsession with linear progress through history cultivates the philosophy of conquering or compromising the Other for the sake of creating the evolving Self.
It would be informative at this point to look at two sonata movements by Beethoven. The first movements of Beethoven's piano sonatas op. 22 in B-flat major and op. 111 in C minor represent two very different periods in his life. Those periods have been neatly categorized for our convenience, of course, but despite their artificiality there are some real differences. I've chosen to look at op. 22 as an example of a textbook-sonata, which Kenneth Drake calls "unproblematic" (226). Hadow and Rosen could argue for years about its binary versus ternary qualities. Adorno usually looks to Beethoven's second period for examples of the Self venturing into the outward world during the development, but the first period op. 22's development is certainly sufficient. The opening ("masculine") theme in B-flat major is concise and energetic. The second theme in F major is more lyrical and more delicate, as it is in a higher register on the keyboard. The development takes the subject into some wonderfully different key areas and transformations of thematic material, all easily traced back to the exposition. The recapitulation begins after a dramatically pianissimo F7 chord, and we are all pleased to hear the second theme stay in the B-flat tonic.
Opus 111 has caused considerably more analysis and discussion. The discourse seems to rotate around Beethoven's use of counterpoint in the midst of the sonata form. Adorno sees this as evidence of Beethoven's realization that subjective autonomy is ultimately false. Counterpoint, he says, suggests the collectivity of society, with possibility or potential of multiple subjects. Thus, "the authentic musical subject of Beethoven's third-period style exercised its autonomy to create configurations that acknowledged its inescapable heteronomy" (Subotnik 27). The more ominous side of this is the subject's awareness of "its subservience to an objective reality that was no longer characterized by rational order but by irrational, indeed meaningless force" (29). According to Adorno, this can be seen musically through the proximity of extremes or contrasts, including the juxtaposition of counterpoint and homophony. He also senses a physical absence of the subject when homophony utilizes "unisons, hollow octaves, wide-spaced sonorities (instead of hierarchical, centered triads), static or stylized melodic lines, conventions generally, and nonpropulsive rhythms" (30). Indeed, the first theme of Op. 111 is unison, but it seems quite strong and sure of itself. I would hesitate to agree that this is indicative of the flight of the subject.
Hadow, who is suspicious of fugues' sometimes ambiguous tonality, admits only that because "counterpoint has always formed an essential element in musical education,
. . . it is not surprising that composers should allow all their more serious work to be, in some measure, influenced by it" (143). However, he says sonata form had to have been perfected before Beethoven even attempted to bring the two together in a structural way. Only after the 100th opus, when "he had brought pure Sonata writing to the highest pitch that the musical language of his time admitted," could he deal with counterpoint (144). By the time he reached his last sonata, then, Beethoven was able to produce a work with
a fully developed first movement where every principle of Ternary form is illustrated, and where the influence of the Fugue is apparent throughout. In it the problem is solved, once for all, with absolute and unfaltering certainty; the general key system is that of the Sonata, the use of accessory keys is suggested by the Fugue; from the one is derived the contrast of sections, from the other the unity of theme; the texture is partly contrapuntal, partly harmonic; the style maintains the two methods in exact balance and equipoise. (156)

The differences between Op. 22 and 111 are subtle yet huge and they point to an underlying thought structure that has evolved throughout the composer's life. At the end of his life, Beethoven's composition was still driven by some of the same images of beauty and pleasure; he simply had more questions then. Still today we have many of the same beauty ideals, indicated by the fact that the general public likes and knows Beethoven more than any 20th century composer. This paper, or more specifically its conclusion, presents philosophical difficulties for me. I quite simply do not know what to offer as a solution to these quandaries presented above. What is one to do when he or she sees the faults in the structures behind works of art? I have seen the misogyny and artificiality that informs Beethoven's sonatas, but I still see the artistic genius. As much as I hate it, Beethoven's music and Hegel's syntheses appeal to me in all their "rich and splendid logical and affective significance." Even I, a woman, have been taught and have experienced the fact that I must conquer my Otherness to be able to function in society. Academic works such as this paper necessarily have some artificiality to them. To construct a logical argument, I have had to choose what to include and how to arrange it. There was no room in such a work for the issues of my physical learning and performance of op. 22. There was no room for my own experience in all its wonderful emotional, bodily, ambiguous reality. All I can do is hang onto my belief in the importance of experience. That is what will validate my participation with the musical genius in history.

 

Works Cited

Abbate, Carolyn. Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth
Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Ballantine, Christopher. "Beethoven, Hegel and Marx." Music Review. Vol. 33, 1972.

Drake, Kenneth. The Beethoven Sonatas and the Creative Experience. Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1994.

Hadow, William Henry. Sonata Form. London: Novello and Company, Limited, 1979.

McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.

Mann, Thomas. Doctor Faustus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.

Rosen, Charles. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. New York: The Viking Press, 1971.

Subotnik, Rose Rosengard. Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.