Product Description

For over 150 years the concept of "sonata form" lay at the heart of European instrumental music. Now, in Elements of Sonata Theory, musicologist James Hepokoski and music theorist Warren Darcy rethink its basic principles. Considering not only sonatas but also chamber music, symphonies, overtures, and concertos, their study outlines a new, updated paradigm for understanding the compositional choices present in the instrumental works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and their contemporaries. It also lays down an indispensable foundation for those working with later adaptations and deformations of these musical structures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Combining insightful research and analysis, contemporary genre theory, and provocative hermeneutic turns, these original perspectives provide a creative approach to the exploration of meaning within a familiar repertory. The authors map out the background terrain of historical norms at work in this music and provide a flexible mode of analysis for perceiving and assessing what happens--or what does not happen--in any given piece. They guide readers through the formatting possibilities within each compositional space in sonata form, while also introducing new ideas for understanding the ordering of musical modules over an entire movement and, more broadly, over an entire multimovement composition.
The product of over a dozen years of research, Elements of Sonata Theory is the most thorough study of the sonata ever undertaken. It serves as a challenge both to students and to experienced musicologists and music theorists to rethink how sonata form is best understood.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148004 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 680 pages

Review

"This is not only a large book but a hugely ambitious one. It reconceptualizes the sonata style of the late eighteenth century in ways consonant with the theory of the time but from the perspective of a present-day listener, one whose life experiences are shaped not by carriages and quills but by jets and computers. Its signal virtue is the way it tracks an expert listener's mental construction of a musical work as it unfolds in real time. Its terminology is deliberately idiosyncratic, but entering the world of sonata theory yields rich rewards. The theory is also syncretic in the best sense: it draws upon and opens up onto the work of thinkers from Koch to Lewin and from Schenker to Sartre."--William Rothstein, Professor of Music Theory at Queens College and The Graduate Center of The City University of New York
"James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy's sonata theory has already had a striking impact on our analysis and interpretation of sonata form. With the publication of Elements of Sonata Theory we now have the real item. Sonata theory is, first and foremost, a theory of genre: Hepokoski and Darcy have immersed themselves for many years in the repertoire that they study, and they argue persuasively for the generic conventions that undergird their study. Sonata theory is also an analytic method: deep knowledge of convention and compositional practice engenders a finely-tuned tool that enables perceptive and sensitive musical analysis. Finally, sonata theory is a means of hermeneutic interpretation: expressive meaning arises out of the interaction of the individual work with generic convention. The meticulous scholarship and the analytical insight of the elements represent the best possible collaboration of musicology and music theory."--Patrick McCreless, Professor of Music Theory, Yale University

About the Author

James Hepokoski is Professor of Music at Yale University. His research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, musical form, hermeneutics, and historiography.
Warren Darcy is Professor of Music Theory at Oberlin College Conservatory. His book Wagner's Das Rheingold (Oxford, 1993) won the Society for Music Theory's Wallace Berry Award in 1995.

Customer Reviews

The Last Word on "Sonata-Form"
As a pianist and music-lover, I have long been fascinated by the movement structure called "sonata-form." "Sonata-form" is the structure of the first movements (and many other movements) of almost every major piece of classical music from the Classical Era. Now a clear and comprehensive analysis of "sonata-form" has arrived, in the book "Elements of Sonata Theory."

The most surprising feature to me is that this book is quite readable. Readability is not something that can be taken for granted in the turgid literature of music theory. Therefore, the book is of value to a layperson like myself and not only to specialists. (The final four chapters, on the concerto version of sonata-form, are more difficult to read, but that is quite minor.) Another surprise to me was that a lot of information in the book was new to me. I have read widely in this field, but I still learned a lot.

Like any first edition, a few questionable statements have slipped in. For example, on p.20 the book implies that after about 1760 it became normal to repeat only the first part (the exposition), and not repeat the second part. Apparently, Mozart was not informed of this normal practice. Mozart called for the repeat of the second part in almost every sonata-form movement in his piano sonatas (28 of 31 sonata-form movements). But this is mere quibbling.

If someone is seriously interested in the subject of "sonata-form," this is the book to get.