Musical Form, Forms & Formenlehre: Three Methodological Reflections

Response to the Comments

5 1 R e s p o n s e t o t h e C o m m e n t s Response to the Comments William E. Caplin Ithank my colleagues for their thoughtful and serious commentaries. Their remarks highlight crucial issues facing the contemporary Formenlehreandaffordmetheopportunityofclarifyingandelaboratingsome of the positions that I staked out in my opening essay. In this response, I address what I take to be the major points of contention raised by my colleagues. These include the general goals of music theory, the specific goals of a theory of musical form, the experience of musical time, the relation of formal functionality to other aspects of form (formal type, thematic content, grouping structure), and the organization of sonata expositions (subordinate theme, closing theme). This response also permits me to raise some additional issues associated with my theory that I alluded to at the end of my opening essay (retrospective reinterpretation , form-functional fusion). Included in the foregoing critiques are matters relating to the goals and methods of music theory in general. Thus James Hepokoski acknowledges that my theory is developed with “rigorous logic” [>41] and that its analytical applications are pursued with “single-minded insistences” [>41]. Yet he considers “some of its definitions (…) either flawed or overly restrictive and inflexible” [>41] and finds that “its pursuit of a mechanistically consistent, systematic reasoning sometimes overrides a more nuanced, more musical response and crosses the line into what we, at least, experience as the counterintuitive” [>41]. He further speaks of a “procedural lockstep” that “may be grounded in a false hope that a quasi -scientific precision might still be obtainable in the area of analytical interpretation” and of “definitional struggles that some readers might find more needlessly disputatious than enlightening” [>43]. At times he considers my reasoning to be “circular, tautological, an exercise in petitio principii” [>43]. And he concludes that “[t]oo-strict definitions too rigidly 5 2 W i l l i a m E . C a p l i n carried out can lead to counterintuitive conclusions. When they do, it is advisable to rethink those definitions” [>45]. These are serious charges. Yet rather than defending against them (for ultimately, they will have to be validated, modified, or rejected by others than myself or my colleague), I would rather respond to what I see as underlying issues regarding the general nature of music theory. For what I sense in Hepokoski’s remarks is a certain suspicion and reluctance to embrace the development of systematic assumptions, definitions, and concepts, along with the attempt to apply such theoretical formulations with logical rigor in the course of analytical work.1 He speaks of rigidities, inflexibilities, and “quasi-scientific precision” [>43]withsuchnegativeconnotationsastosuggestthatatheoryofmusic that strives for these qualities should be condemned from the start. But surely these same values could be interpreted in a more positive light as essential goals of any theoretical enterprise. Some of Hepokoski’s concerns may pertain to a distinction between ‘theory’ and ‘analysis.’2 As I stated in the introduction to Classical Form (in an attempt to forestall precisely the kind of critique leveled by Hepokoski ), my “theory establishes strict formal categories but applies them flexibly in analysis.”3 By ‘flexibly,’ I largely mean the use of multiple concepts—each one being rigorously defined—in cases where ambiguities of structure present themselves. I do not mean constantly changing and revising the definitions in light of the compositional complexities presented by the music. This being said, there are nevertheless significant heuristic advantages of applying rigorous concepts to their logical end, for such a pursuit often leads to new modes of hearing familiar passages . In Beethoven’s Pastoral finale, for example, Hepokoski derides my establishment of “the unnecessary assumption that all expositions must have a subordinate theme” [>44], which thus sets me “off on the hunt” [>44] for such a theme, one that “would probably never have occurred as suchtoexperiencedlisteners”[>45].Iwouldcounterthatsuchanalytical hunts can pay off handsomely and that even experienced listeners can come to new ways of hearing.4 To be sure, the ‘catch’ may at times prove unenlightening (and I have no objections to Hepokoski, or anyone else, being unconvinced in the particular instance of the Pastoral), but I reject the implication that such analytical quests are, in principle, futile. They 5 3 R e s p o n s e t o t h e C o m m e n t s...