Form in Post-Tonal Music (Questionnaire answers: #3)

Question 3 from my "Form in Post-Tonal Music (1)" post is this:

3.  Should post-tonal music avoid forms associated with tonal music? Do you feel obligated to use "new" forms, as opposed to old forms such as sonata and rondo?

Ah! Now we finally get to a discussion of form specific to post-tonal music!

The background for this question is that Pierre Boulez, in his infamous "Schoenberg is Dead" polemic, criticized Schoenberg for, amongst other things, using old forms with new musical language.  This is sometimes expressed as the "foolishness" of pouring new wine into old wineskins.

In a remarkably thoughtful comment on the questions asked in my "Form in Post-Tonal Music (1)" post, Warren, a composition student at U. Wisconsin-Milwaukee, writes:

Contemporary composers may do whatever they like in regards to prefered forms, though I have to reference Boulez (it feels terrible to reference a terribly mean, spiteful person) when he talks about using forms that aren't tied up with the common practice period. Boulez has a very good point in that the drive of a Sonata or a Rondo is very key-centric, and once you're operating outside of the world of keys, the connection becomes a bit tenuous. Sure, you can compose a sonata or a rondo that utilizes differing sets or theories for each distant key you would encounter, but what made the common practice period forms work was the socialization of functional harmony. We can use old forms for new harmonic structures, but they become much harder to hear outside of a long context like the common practice.

These are all excellent points, and here is an edited version of my reply:

With regards to Boulez and his views on the use of old forms in new music, here are some of my thoughts:

1. I understand the perception of intellectual inconsistency in using new organizing principals for pitch, rhythm, articulations, and dynamics, but then not using new organizational principals for form. Basically, if you're going to use a radical new approach to the choice of pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and articulations, why not go all the way and use a radical new approach to texture, phrases (if indeed you have any), and form?


2. And yet, Boulez has written three piano sonatas, a Sonatine for flute/piano, and a sonata for two pianos. Admittedly, these mostly were written before he turned 30 (although he continued tinkering with his third piano sonata until he was 38, and it is still "unfinished"), but at the very least this suggests that, early on, he was interested in playing with (or reacting to) old forms with new-ish, serialist language. Paul Griffiths writes that the second sonata has "strong intimations of sonata form in the first movement, and of fugue in the finale." Boulez, on the other hand, has said he was trying to "destroy" sonata form in this piece. If so, calling it a sonata and structuring the first movement in a way that is related to sonata form seems a curious way to do this.


3. Can older forms can work with newer musical language? Schoenberg, Bartok, Ligeti, and many other post-tonal composers seem to have thought so, and I see no reason to deny this possibility. The counter-argument to point 1 above is that a composition is not a purely-intellectual exercise; you can argue that it is inconsistent to adopt older forms for compositions employing newer techniques of pitch organization, and that argument can seem reasonable from a purely logical perspective, but if some composers produce powerful and successful compositions while using older forms, then this "logical" inconsistency is moot.


4. Sonata form expositions feature a contrast between the "home" key and a (usually) "closely-related" key, followed by the instability resulting from touching on more distantly related keys in the development. Obviously, if writing post-tonal music with no sense of pitch centre, adopting this aspect of the sonata principle is not feasible. This principle can be applied to post-tonal music that is in any sense pitch-centric, however; instead of home and contrasting keys, one can create home and contrasting pitch centres.


5. In addition to a contrast in key, there is often a contrast in character (i.e., mood) between the first and second theme groups in sonata form as well; the opening theme is often attention-grabbing and dramatic, while the second theme group often begins in a more lyrical character. If looking for ways to make sonata form work in post-tonal music, this contrast in mood is an aspect that could be adopted.


6. Sonata form also employs thematic fragmentation and other aspects of development, as well as sections of greater and lesser harmonic and affective tension; all of these aspects can be at play in non-tonal music as well.

Bringing the discussion back to my own answer to this question, it is probably clear by now that I don't believe post-tonal music "should" avoid older forms, and even if I did hold this belief for my own music, I don't believe in being prescriptive about matters like these. Just because I believe something, doesn't mean others "should" believe it as well.

Do I use old forms? Not exactly… I am not sure I have ever composed something that I knew to be in classical sonata form, for instance.¹ I have, however, used principles from this form frequently in writing music. These include presentation of themes with differing characters, moving the pitch centre around, exploring the continuum between stability and instability, using fragmentation and other forms of development, false recapitulations, playing with codas, and, in the largest sense, using A-B-A forms. An example of a piece of mine that does all these things, and is kind of like sonata form is Dream Dance; click the link to check it out if you wish!

It seems likely that Boulez — or at least the young, militant Boulez that wrote his controversial article referenced above — would consider any hint of an older form in modern music to be embracing the false trappings of the past, but I think that most artists are, willingly or unwillingly, part of various artistic traditions which we can choose to embrace or reject, and not narcissistic iconoclasts, rejecting everything that came before us. Even Boulez, in purportedly rejecting Schoenberg's aesthetic, was embracing Webern's.

So, basically, I don't believe in "should" statements when it comes to aesthetics. If you believe it makes sense to reject the use of older forms in your music, then do this! If you believe otherwise, then go ahead and use older forms in your compositions! Either way, what really matters is your degree of satisfaction with the finished product, not what others think you should or should not do.

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¹ One possible exception would be the two pieces I wrote for Kristina Szutor's "Après Scarlatti" CD, Domenico 1° and Domenico 2°. In these I deliberately based the structures on Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas, which are related in structure to later sonata form (the kind used by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven), but with many differences.

Form in Post-Tonal Music (Questionnaire answers: #2)

Question 2 from my "Form in Post-Tonal Music (1)" post is this:

2.  Most compositions from the 18th- and 19th-centuries use a small number of existing forms (binary, ternary, rondo, sonata, variations). Does this mean that originality, when it comes to form, is not important?

I touched on this in my answer to question 1, but briefly, the use of the same forms by both good and less-good composers might suggest that a composer's originality in the way s/he uses large-scale form is not hugely important to the overall quality of a composition.

One of the reasons theorists and composers delight in studying Beethoven's music and regard it so highly, however, is that he took existing forms and modified them in significant ways.

A specific example of this is his conversion of the coda in sonata form from a simple, short, tonality-affirming and concluding section, to a lengthy, second development section (as in Piano Sonata No. 21 ("Waldstein"), op. 53, I, Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica"), I, or Symphony No. 8, I.  In addition, he expanded the development section itself to a point where it was sometimes longer than the entire exposition (c.f., Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica"), and more generally, he wrote significantly-longer symphonies than his predecessors.

Here is a link to a graph that shows this; If accurate, it is a striking visual representation of the difference in proportions between Beethoven's sonata form in the Eroica symphony, and Mozart's in any of his three final symphonies.

Haydn's contribution to the development of sonata form was huge, to the extent that when we describe a "model" sonata form, we are describing the form he established, albeit probably influenced by C. P. E. Bach; just as Haydn is sometimes called the "father of the string quartet," and "father of the symphony," he could also be called the "father of sonata form."

The great composers were not complacent about form. Not every work they composed broke new formal ground, but, over the entirety of their careers, they often did break new ground in terms of large-scale form.

Not every work by great composers showed originality in large-scale forms, but many did, and we recognize these contributions today by performing and recording these centuries-old works, and by studying them in musical form classes.

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To summarize, here is my four-part answer to the question above:

1. For the most part, large-scale forms used by composers are not particularly original, if by original we mean “created directly and personally by a particular artist; not a copy or imitation,” or “not dependent on other people's ideas; inventive and unusual,” two dictionary definitions of the word.


2. When we speak of originality as applied to form, we usually refer to relatively minor changes within existing forms. Some changes, within this context, were startling and unprecedented, as was the case when Beethoven expanded the coda section of sonata form, but most were more subtle than this. 


3. Originality of form, in this subtle context, is definitely important; the ways in which some composers effected changes to existing forms is one of the reasons we tend to regard them so highly; Haydn and Beethoven contributed enormously to the development and evolution of sonata form. However, (a) they did not attempt to reinvent the form every time they used it, and (b) their changes to large-scale forms were gradual, occurring over the span of their careers, and were mostly "tweaks" of existing practices.   


4. Not every composition needs to be unique and unprecedented in terms of large-scale form. We wouldn't write very many compositions if it were otherwise!  Even great composers used a limited number of large-scale forms. They did not attempt to "reinvent the wheel" every time they wrote a work. Nor, I would argue, should we in our compositions. 

Before leaving this question, I will just repeat something from my previous post on this topic:

"Form" exists on multiple levels simultaneously in a composition, from the very small scale, such as the intervalic content in a motive, the way in which a theme is constructed, motivic breakdown, the functions of each phrase segment, thematic structure such as period, sentence, phrase group, "auto-generative," fortspinnung, etc., to increasingly larger scales such as the structure of sections, movements, and entire multi-movement works."

To me, a  core value in great music is the simultaneous existence of all these levels of formal organization; this is more important than the originality of the form.