# Why sonata form?



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

chu42 said:


> Motivic unity. People didn't have recordings back then, so they likely didn't get to hear much of anything multiple times. The da capo ternary form of the aria is also an example of this. Composers wanted a work to be memorable, and a nice structure with multiple repeatable themes did just that.


I've heard this sort of idea before, that the repetition in sonata form was to help people remember.

Is there any evidence for this? Hard historical evidence for the idea that this is what was actually motivating composers who used sonata form?


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## Isaac Blackburn (Feb 26, 2020)

Not primarily. "Sonata form" is best viewed as a tonal scheme; it is only also a motivic/thematic scheme insofar as the themes are the bearers of certain tonalities. 

Classical composers, in handling a tonal organism, actually found that certain procedures such as modulation to the dominant for the secondary theme emerge naturally out of the nature of their harmonic ideas and their understanding of harmonic movement. To be sure, in lesser composers the form might have been a quick-and-easy way to ensure tonal coherence, but in the masters - Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart - the sonata form was inevitable.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

it's difficult because I don't think the rules of sonata form were ever set in stone a la "The Art Of Fugue" until musicology became much more of a thing (this isn't unusual, people were composing things we'd classify as fugues or rondos well before Bach, after all - these "rules" tend to come into place after people have discovered them on their own, a la the codification of the standard Campbell Hero's Journey plot structure). 

the empirical evidence is that if the music you're writing is based on variation of themes, then repetition of the exposition makes sense as it makes it clearer which themes are actually to be developed and played with. there's also the matter that some theme development can sound repetitious - like simply changing the key, playing with the theme's rhythm, cutting it into bits and developing a specific phrase in the theme, etc.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The general consensus was that aristocracy in the eighteenth century "knew" a lot more about how music worked than average people today. But also, composers found that establishing a key, deviating from it, and returning, added drama and "worked" (by trial and error) -- so they did it.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

The exposition of a sonata form is ultimately a movement to and perfect authentic cadence on the dominant key, and the repeat helps "section off" this modulation to the dominant. Going straight to the development, in works that have the repeat sign written (which is most of them), has often felt to me like trivializing or not acknowledging this movement to and establishment the dominant. Performs omit the repeat too often, especially in slow movements. This is a mistake.

The first movement of the Eroica symphony benefits from the exposition repeat. It clarifies and acknowledges the initial movement to the dominant. To exaggerate my opinion a bit, omitting the repeat makes the movement feel to me somewhat like a free fantasia. The movement does become longer with the repeat, but if you play the movement at Beethoven's tempo marking, at the proper speed, it works out. Most conductors play it too slowly.

The movement to and establishment of the dominant in music as a "unit" to be repeated was a common pattern, going back to the baroque era. Even in minuets or any other dance form, we'd have a first section moving to the dominant repeated (an "exposition"), and a second section starting off in more remote harmonies (a "development") and moving back to the tonic while repeating a lot of the material of the first section and making sure it winds up in the tonic in the end (a "recapitulation"). This second section is also repeated. Clearly you can see that omitting the repeats for the first and second sections here would give the sections a lack of identity as units.

In symphonic/quartet movements of Haydn and Mozart, often the development-recapitulation is repeated as a unit as well, although performers these days really often omit this repeat. Gradually, as the development section become more weighty and dramatic, this second unit of development-recapitulation was not given a repeat in the score, because it lack sense to repeat the weighty development - it's too much of a dramatic event that shouldn't be done again.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I hope you don't object, Chu, to me doing this to you!

Chu's claim was that it was all about this



chu42 said:


> Composers wanted a work to be memorable, and a nice structure with multiple repeatable themes did just that.


and the claim was that this was relevant in the days before recordings



chu42 said:


> Motivic unity. People didn't have recordings back then, so they likely didn't get to hear much of anything multiple times.


and I think that's what someone said to me in school. Am I right to think that it's not sustainable?


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

I think there may be two "repeats" going on here- both the literal repetition of themes in the exposition (the actual exposition repeat sign) and the sometimes repetitious nature of theme development (simple example - playing the theme in a different key) - the former is the one which would be more important before recordings, while the latter is down to how the composer wants to handle how themes are developed.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Isaac Blackburn said:


> ...Classical composers, in handling a tonal organism, actually found that certain procedures such as modulation to the dominant for the secondary theme emerge naturally out of the nature of their harmonic ideas and their understanding of harmonic movement...


excuse to post this again


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Going straight to the development, in works that have the repeat sign written (which is most of them), has often felt to me like* trivializing or not acknowledging this movement *to and establishment the dominant. Performs omit the repeat too often, especially in slow movements. This is a mistake.
> 
> The first movement of the Eroica symphony benefits from the exposition repeat. It clarifies and acknowledges the initial movement to the dominant. To exaggerate my opinion a bit, *omitting the repeat makes the movement feel to me somewhat like a free fantasia*. The movement does become longer with the repeat, but if you play the movement at Beethoven's tempo marking, at the proper speed, it works out.


Another example of what happens when one cuts repetitions are the two final movements of Beethoven's 5th, as edited in this video (16:15-27:00)






I think that your observations fit quite nicely what happens with the finale in this edit (of mine).


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

The repeated exposition in sonata forms was a holdover from the binary dance form from which it arose. Both parts of binary dances were repeated, as were both the expo and the development-recap pair in early sonata forms. The repetition was there because of tradition until its largely vestigial nature became clear and expositions became longer.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I've heard this sort of idea before, that the repetition in sonata form was to help people remember.
> 
> Is there any evidence for this? Hard historical evidence for the idea that this is what was actually motivating composers who used sonata form?


Are you familiar with Susan McClary's argument about (19th-c) sonata form, seeing it as analogous to (and reflecting in music a logic of) a masculine 'self' and a feminine 'other' which is finally 'tamed' or 'conquered', or, alternately and simultaneously, as an imperial metropolitan 'self' and a colonized 'other'?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

cheregi said:


> Are you familiar with Susan McClary's argument about (19th-c) sonata form, seeing it as analogous to (and reflecting in music a logic of) a masculine 'self' and a feminine 'other' which is finally 'tamed' or 'conquered', or, alternately and simultaneously, as an imperial metropolitan 'self' and a colonized 'other'?


Good choice of word there - "analogous"

One thing I would say in favour of this type of hermeneutical approach, is that when it comes to sonata form, I have great difficulty making any sense of it. It seems to be a museum piece, born out of conceptions of harmonic correctness which, from my point of view, make no sense whatsoever. So I'm kind of interested in any way of reading sonata form pieces which makes them more interesting than dusty relics from olden times.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Good choice of word there - "analogous"
> 
> One thing I would say in favour of this type of hermeneutical approach, is that when it comes to sonata form, I have great difficulty making any sense of it. It seems to be a museum piece, born out of conceptions of harmonic correctness which, from my point of view, make no sense whatsoever. So I'm kind of interested in any way of reading this sonata form pieces which makes them more interesting than dusty relics from olden times.


This is too complicated a subject for a short post, but: The structures and expressive patterns of sonata form movements are exceedingly varied and the form has undergone centuries of evolution with multiple aesthetic paradigm shifts along the way. Consequently, there is no general approach to understanding structure and meaning in the form. If one examines sonata form movements by, say, CPE Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich, one will need an entirely different framework for the structural analysis and for the hermeneutic interpretation of each.

So, to get a useful response you are probably going to have to specify what era (and/or country) you are interested in and what composer(s).

By the way, McClary's ideas on interpreting sonata form are poorly formulated and argued.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I don't know the historical basis for sonata form development (it seems a worthy topic for research), but I do appreciate the form and find it fascinating in all its variants. The important thing is that the mindset of 18th century artists was locked into "form" or "structure" as the initial building block or foundation of art, be it music, literature, painting, sculpture, or theatre. Sonata Form belongs to that category of "classical form" and seems as natural to the 18th century or "classically concerned" composer as iambic pentameter and heroic couplets were to English poets, Greek structural design to architects, and the five-act form to playwrights. It seems that the most successful art of the classical era came from those with genius enough to deal with the more-or-less rigid forms presented to them, by not letting the form restrict their creativity but rather inspire it.

In lengthy works like a symphony there is so much going on that the act of remembering specific details (especially upon an initial listen) may easily escape even the most astute audience member. Certainly, acquaintance with the forms will help one negotiate the complexities of a lengthy work. First movements were generally sonata form, second movements often theme and variations, third movements minuet and trio, fourth movements Rondo. When one considers the restraining force of such forms and then considers how original and great works of art have come from out of them, he/she can certainly appreciate the creative talent of the composer responsible. If a musical work of classical form sticks in the memory, it seems to me it does so more because of the creative talent side of the equation rather than the "form" side of the equation since there is an abundance of lackluster, less than memorable classical era symphonies out there which no one hearing one will remember much about at the music's final double bar line.

The same, I would suggest, about 18th century poetry. Alexander Pope provided us with memorable lines within a form that so many of his contemporaries used to record absolutely forgettable language. For all the importance of form in art (I always suggest that form is meaning), it takes something more than the form or the structure to render something memorable.

Sonata form seems to me a showcase for a composer to exhibit his/her wares, and a wonderfully versatile showcase at that, even with its restrictions and rules. In our current century and the one preceding it we have seen (and heard) the results of so much unbounded art. Again, the great artists realize that some sort of form is not necessarily a hindrance but an aid to creative juices. Even Schoenberg worked at formulating a plan of attack for serial music; it wasn't just a random use of each of the 12 tones of the scale.

Though I remain a relative amateur to things sonata-form in nature, I appreciate knowing something about the form (its workings and organization, its demands, its strengths and weaknesses) for this assists me in appreciating the music I hear by way of the form. It is fascinating to see how great composers utilize the form, from the early 18th century into our own century. The various moldings of the structure truly demonstrate the admonition that form _is_, indeed, meaning.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> This is too complicated a subject for a short post, but: The structures and expressive patterns of sonata form movements are exceedingly varied and the form has undergone centuries of evolution with multiple aesthetic paradigm shifts along the way. Consequently, there is no general approach to understanding structure and meaning in the form. If one examines sonata form movements by, say, CPE Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich, one will need an entirely different framework for the structural analysis and for the hermeneutic interpretation of each.
> 
> So, to get a useful response you are probably going to have to specify what era (and/or country) you are interested in and what composer(s).
> 
> By the way, McClary's ideas on interpreting sonata form are poorly formulated and argued.


I've never read her, but I am at the moment more interested in hermeneutics than I am in historicism. Which is a good McClary book to buy, just to get a better feel for what's at stake than I can from social media?

You may be right to say that her work isn't well argued, but what I don't know is whether she's saying that her interpretations are "true"


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

EdwardBast said:


> So, to get a useful response you are probably going to have to specify what era (and/or country) you are interested in and what composer(s).
> 
> By the way, McClary's ideas on interpreting sonata form are poorly formulated and argued.


I'm very interested in exploring the changing nature of sonata form over time (or place), and exploring why it might have changed in the ways it did... I'm also curious, having not actually read McClary on sonata form (but finding her discussion of modal musics very compelling), what about her work is poorly formulated and argued, and what other thinkers/ideas I might put her in dialogue with...



Mandryka said:


> I've never read her, but I am at the moment more interested in hermeneutics than I am in historicism. Which is a good McClary book to buy, just to get a better feel for what's at stake than I can from social media?
> 
> You may be right to say that her work isn't well argued, but what I don't know is whether she's saying that her interpretations are "true"


Again with the caveat that I haven't actually read it, just summaries, and having a favorable impression of her other books which I have read, I think Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, & Sexuality is where she lays out this argument most clearly.



SONNET CLV said:


> I don't know the historical basis for sonata form development...


One thing I think is interesting in response to this is, recently I've done something of a deep dive into Romantic-era performance practices, as heard on early recordings, and how they contrast with the contemporary conservatory style (this has been a thought-provoking read), and one of the most consistent things is that Romantic-era musicians were concerned with moment-by-moment beauty, with each decision at each moment operating in in response to, or within the logic of, the previous few moments only, those retained in short-term musical memory... whereas the newer 'modern' style that took over after the 1930s severely downplayed moment-by-moment expression, relatively speaking, in favor of the musical argument of structure over longer periods of time...


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> I hope you don't object, Chu, to me doing this to you!
> 
> Chu's claim was that it was all about this
> 
> ...


No problem, I would like to get down to the bottom of it as well.

I was taught that memorability was a factor for why the da capo aria was invented, so I also assumed that sonata form had a similar frame of thought behind it.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

The great sonata form was developed mostly from the Classical period by its masters to show theme and variation were the main ingredients in harmonic development. That a minimum amount of thematic material could be developed into complete exhaustion of ideas, something which Bach was preoccupied with earlier in the Baroque. It was an essential model of composition to show how musical themes could be constrained and developed without pointlessly meandering into offshoots that confuse the composition. This was the great Classical aesthetics.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

cheregi said:


> I'm very interested in exploring the changing nature of sonata form over time (or place), and exploring why it might have changed in the ways it did... I'm also curious, having not actually read McClary on sonata form (but finding her discussion of modal musics very compelling), what about her work is poorly formulated and argued, and what other thinkers/ideas I might put her in dialogue with...


Read "Sexual Politics in Classical Music" in _Feminine Endings_. This essay purports to find a sinister misogynistic narrative underlying the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, a work whose meaning and narrative is discussed by its composer (in published letters) in more detail than any other work of the era. McClary fails to cite these crucial documents. This is either incompetence or a cynical disregard for any attempt at objectivity. All of Tchaikovsky's remarks on the work contradict McClary's interpretation. The misogynistic narrative paradigm McClary postulates is a self-contradictory logical shell game. She tries to support her interpretive method with sources in structuralist literary theory (Vladimir Propp, Yuri Lotmann and others) but she manages to misread and misrepresent each of the theorists she cites. She seeks further support for her paradigm by arguing that her interpretation of "feminine themes" in Tchaikovsky's Fourth parallels portrayals of female characters in 19thc literature. Alas, she cites only one opera libretto and two Bible stories in support of her position, whereas the works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Hugo, Trollope, Ibsen and a host of others make nonsense of her assertions. She commits errors in musical analysis. She cherry picks isolated statements by 19thc critics while ignoring the overwhelming mass of their work that undercuts her argument.

I could go on, but until you read the essay there's not much point in that. If after you read it you want me to flesh out a refutation of her argument, just check back in with a thread on the topic.

Here find an essay by Paula Higgins that puts McClary's theory in perspective. You'll likely have to find the journal or get around a pay wall:

https://online.ucpress.edu/ncm/arti...iticism-and-Guerrilla?redirectedFrom=fulltext


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

there's also stuff like 




 (4:34 ~ 8:43)


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Mandryka, in Da Capo arias , the repetition of A was meant as an opportunity for singers to embellish the first part as elaborately as possible in order to display their vocal prowess .


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

EdwardBast said:


> The repeated exposition in sonata forms was a holdover from the binary dance form from which it arose. Both parts of binary dances were repeated, *as were both the expo and the development-recap pair in early sonata forms*. The repetition was there because of tradition until its largely vestigial nature became clear and expositions became longer.


Could you provide some examples? (I believe Scarlatti did this, though I'm not sure to what extent he could really be considered a progenitor of sonata form).


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

I also have a hard time buying into this idea that the repeat of the exposition was purely a practical or "vestigial" matter and did not serve a structural or dramatic role in the minds of 18th and 19th c. composers. If that were the case, how do we account for the form of concertos?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> If that were the case, how do we account for the form of concertos?


I agree. There are also;

*Kyrie* 
exposition -[ 0:01 ~ 1:11 ] 
development -[ 1:12 ~ 2:02 ]
recapitulation -[ 2:03 ~ 3:00 ]





*Credo*
exposition -[ 5:29 ~ 7:17 ] 
development -[ 7:18 ~ 10:04 ] 
recapitulation -[ 10:05 ~ 13:38 ] ("Et in spiritum" 11:29 can be seen as the secondary development or false recapitulation)





*Kyrie*
exposition -[ 1:08 ~ 2:56 ]
development -[ 2:57 ~ 4:21 ]
recapitulation -[ 4:22 ~ 6:53 ] ("Miserere nobis" 4:44 can be seen as the secondary development or false recapitulation)





So, where are the "repeats"?

Likewise, look at


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Some good and interesting posts in this thread. But might we lose track of the simple - that, in music, structure delivers an experience over time which leaves us temporarily changed (we might say "satisfied" or "mystified" or "energised" or "angered" or any number of the other words). Sonata form does this in a way that is frequently very effective for me. 

BTW Is it really inevitably the case that one theme eventually dominates another when they are combined? Can there not be a "win-win" in which two opposing ideas create a third that belongs to them both?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I read somewhere, that the sonata form was just a way of structuring and developing music to achieve drama, or is musically satisfying. Exposition repeat or none.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> I read somewhere, that the sonata form was just a way of structuring and developing music to achieve drama, or is musically satisfying. Exposition repeat or none.


It seems to go hand in hand with « argument music » - some idea is introduced, explored, varied, and finally everything brought to a conclusion. And it does it in a way which is easy to read, you always know where you are, you always know what's going on, and you always get something obviously coherent from the experience of listening.

And I think it's also true that the alternatives are problematic. The form of contemporary music has sometimes been insubstantial and lacking in rigour in my opinion.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

I can see why the form.fell by the wayside in favor of cyclical themes or "thematic cells" and whatnot though. After a while it seems to me that sonata form would become like a straitjacket.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

consuono said:


> I can see why the form.fell by the wayside in favor of cyclical themes or "thematic cells" and whatnot though. After a while it seems to me that sonata form would become like a straitjacket.


again, One-movement Sonata Cycle


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

This is obviously no new information to those well versed in music theory, but it's probably good to have here anyway:

Whereas in the Classical Era the function of the form was primarily *tonal* - i.e. to establish the movement from the tonic to the dominant back to the tonic through the development - rather than *thematic* (in fact, in some pieces - like Haydn's "London" Symphony, the primary and secondary themes are identical or nearly identical), Romantic composers focused more heavily on using the parameters of sonata form to explore *thematic* contrast; and regarding the tonal movement outlined by the form, it was much more common that the secondary theme would be in a different key from V (or III in minor) - Beethoven's Hammerklavier for instance.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Could you provide some examples? (I believe Scarlatti did this, though I'm not sure to what extent he could really be considered a progenitor of sonata form).


CPE Bach's sonatas. Haydn piano sonatas. Early Mozart sonatas. For a more modern holdout, Schubert's Sonata in A major, D. 664.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

EdwardBast said:


> CPE Bach's sonatas. Haydn piano sonatas. Early Mozart sonatas. For a more modern holdout, Schubert's Sonata in A major, D. 664.


Oh yes you're right about Haydn. I'd forgotten. I do recall being a little surprised by this practice when looking at the scores. Some of them have pretty beefy developments too!

Did he always do this in the piano sonatas, or only sometimes? How about CPE? (Sorry for my bad memory!)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> I also have a hard time buying into this idea that the repeat of the exposition was purely a practical or "vestigial" matter and did not serve a structural or dramatic role in the minds of 18th and 19th c. composers. If that were the case, how do we account for the form of concertos?


The repeat of the exposition in most early sonata-allegro movements was also a matter of architectural balance, as others have suggested above. It resulted in a kind of quaternary structure (AABA) that echoes on the grand scale the phrase structure of many classical themes. The practice of repeating the exposition became habitual and vestigial later, although when and to what extent is debatable, as it was for Beethoven.

First movement in the concerto was influence by the da capo aria, in which the main idea was stated instrumentally before the soloist took it up. Rosen's _Sonata Forms_, if I remember correctly, addresses this.



BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Oh yes you're right about Haydn. I'd forgotten. I do recall being a little surprised by this practice when looking at the scores. Some of them have pretty beefy developments too!
> 
> Did he always do this in the piano sonatas, or only sometimes? How about CPE? (Sorry for my bad memory!)


CPE pretty much all of them. From a brief perusal of one my Haydn sonata scores: not always. Early ones yes, later ones not necessarily (couldn't locate Volume II, so I don't know how often he chucked the second-half repeat in the later ones.)


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

^^^ IIRC, there is some leeway as to what the instrumental exposition can contain; of course always the first theme, but then it may present either the second theme, transitional material, material in the development, etc. At least this is the case in Mozart's PC's.

_First movement for in the concerto was influence by the da capo aria, in which the main idea was stated instrumentally before the soloist took it up. Rosen's Sonata Forms, if I remember correctly, addresses this._

Really? That seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least. The instrumental expositions in _da capo_ arias are only a few measures long, no? In concertos they're of comparable length to the soloist's exposition...


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> _First movement for in the concerto was influence by the da capo aria, in which the main idea was stated instrumentally before the soloist took it up. Rosen's Sonata Forms, if I remember correctly, addresses this._
> 
> Really? That seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least. The instrumental expositions in _da capo_ arias are only a few measures long, no? In concertos they're of comparable length to the soloist's exposition...


Take it up with Rosen, many of whose ideas I have disputed or found dubious. 

Although … In CPE Bach's keyboard concertos the expositions are often monothematic, so the opening tutti is a single theme, just as in the aria.


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