The Sonata by Thomas Schmidt-Beste (review)

With the publication this year of Electronic Music by Nick Collins, Margaret Schedel, and Scott Wilson, the Cambridge Introductions to Music series has reached its twentieth volume. The first in the series, appearing in 2008, was Arnold Whittall’s Serialism. More recent titles include The Song Cycle (Laura Tunbridge, 2011) and Postmodernism in Music (Kenneth Gloag, 2013). The avowed aim of each contribution is to ‘focus on a key topic in music fundamental to undergraduate and graduate studies’ (<www.cambridge.org>, accessed 22 Aug. 2013). In its choice of topic Thomas Schmidt-Beste’s The Sonata certainly realizes this aim.

In a book of only 263 pages Schmidt-Beste confronts the full range of meanings and applications of the term ‘sonata’. The four main chapters are devoted to ‘Definitions’ (the sonata’s derivation from instrumental genres such as the canzona, sonata da chiesa, and sonata da camera); ‘Form’ (a magisterial history of the form, and survey of relevant repertory spanning the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries); ‘Functions and aesthetics (contextualizing the sonata socially and in relation to specific sectors of the music profession); and ‘Scoring and texture’ (including aspects of performance practice related to both solo and ensemble sonatas). Despite the devotion of space to duo and other types of ensemble sonata, prioritization of the solo piano sonata is conspicuous, and sufficiently so, perhaps, to disappoint non-keyboard players. However, the author maintains a broad geographical range, showing how different nations predominated at different stages in the cultivation of the sonata: in the early to mid-eighteenth century‘Italy remained the centre of sonata composition’ (p. 51), whereas Austro-Germany took over later, culminating in what Schmidt-Beste clearly regards as the superlative achievements of Beethoven.

Each chapter is subdivided into multiple levels of subsections designated with a complex numbering system. When three levels are reached (section ‘4.1.1.1’ within ‘4.1.1’ within ‘4.1’, for instance) the thread of the surrounding discussion is in some danger of being lost. Analyses of individual works, often accompanied by musical excerpts, are presented separately from the main text, in shaded boxes. Helpful though this is visually, the analytical detail can seem too divorced from the surrounding discussion and excessive to its requirements; and when the shaded analyses are absent, conversely, the text can seem deprived of the necessary technical exemplification. Some of the analytical discussions, furthermore, are unconvincing on technical grounds. In one instance Schmidt-Beste tries to derive the principal themes of all three movements of Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata from a dotted ascent from middle C to E♭ in bar 1, which he describes as the ‘basic motive’ (p. 124). His interpretation of the opening theme of the Adagio cantabile as a ‘variant of the basic motive with lower auxiliary note B♭ instead of upper auxiliary note D’ seems especially doubtful; the two melodic fragments differ in contour, rhythm, key, tempo, and expressive disposition. Even more tenuous are the motivic connections Schmidt-Beste traces in Chopin’s Piano Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 35 (p. 144).

Given this book’s modest dimensions, the attempted coverage is extremely ambitious. Certain aspects of the undertaking are managed with considerable dexterity. The author engages with a wide expanse of repertory while prioritizing clearly and, in general, logically and fairly. In chapter 2 Corelli and Beethoven are pivotal (Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ Sonata provides a source of exemplification throughout the book) but reference is also made to such figures as Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) (p. 49), and Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) whose Sonata in F sharp minor, Op. 81 receives an analytical discussion. Schmidt-Beste also steers skilfully a course between describing and exemplifying formal conventions in a way that is approachable to students, while demonstrating their flexible deployment by composers, in turn revealing the inadequacy of standard theoretical codifications of ‘sonata form’. In the section dealing with the Classical-era sonata exposition (pp...