sonata form and guitar literature--what is the difference between average and good?

Having written about sonata form in guitar literature it will surprise no one I've got opinions about it.  I've written about sonata form as used by Sor, Giuliani and Diabelli and so you won't be shocked that I've paid attention to whether or not anyone's bothered to record Diabelli's sonatas.  Anthony Glise's recording is excellent and, sadly, out of print.  At the end of this month, however, there's a new recording that's going to be available.  Here is the disc that will be coming out from Brilliant Classics, in case you're interested.

As I've written before of the three Diabelli's sonatas, as explorations of sonata form, are the most compelling overall.  While Sor and Giuliani provide brilliant early explorations of the form their later works get bogged down in, literally, the grandness of the scope they were going for.  Not all guitarist composers who have attempted large-scale sonata form failed.  In fact Matiegka's two Grand Sonatas for solo guitar (the first of which is recorded by David Leisner) are compelling explorations of large form.  Arguably Matiegka's handling of sonata form is better than that of Sor, Giuliani or even Diabelli.

But that's a pretty bold assertion to make and it depends on being able to mount some definition and defense of what a good sonata form actually is.  Charles Rosen has amply established that sonata form itself is more slippery than imagined by scholastic musicologists.  Do you think a sonata has two groups?  It may have three.  Do you propose that the two groups must be of contrasting character? What about all those monothematic sonata forms Haydn wrote?  Wasn't Haydn considered the pioneer of what we now consider sonata form? 

If you were to ask the average classical guitarist what the best set of sonatas for solo guitar are the answer would probably not be Sor, Giuliani, Diabelli or (sadly) Matiegka (and in Matiegka's case we haven't had a chance to hear commercial recordings of his eleven sonatas yet).  While the jury may be out in the long-haul a lot of people like the guitar sonatas of Ponce.  I happen to like them, too, even though I actually can't stand the variations and fugue on La Folia and would even agree with Matanya Ophee that Ponce was ultimately a composer of second rank.  Second rank is still pretty impressive, though. 

Now "if" we grant that Ponce's guitar sonatas represent the great achievement in terms of their being played a whole lot we could ask what is characteristic of them.  I'm going to go out on a limb and propose that it's simple, Ponce's guitar sonatas work because they demonstrate a clear grasp of development as a principle in sonata form but, just as crucially, Ponce's sonatas for guitar show a clear grasp of structural differentiation within and across segments of the form.

When guitarist-composers tackle sonata form what can often happen is that, frankly, the themes in the exposition don't always seem different enough for their observable differences to matter.  Unless you're a scholar whose job it is to know where the modulations occur within the exposition and recapitulation what are the odds you could hum the tunes in the structural key-points of any given guitar sonata?  Can you do that for Giuliani's lovely Op. 15?  That's good because that's one of the ones where you can do that.  How about Sor's brilliant Op. 14?  Yep, there as well. 

Now what about those grand sonatas?  Not quite so much.

But with Ponce you can practically see how schematic everything is and in the best possible way.  Ponce could crank out some solid tunes with solid differences across the form.  Ponce's guitar sonatas are fine examples of sonata form for our instrument precisely because they're so conservative, even scholastic in bearing.   There's no mistaking where theme 1 and theme 2 are even when he builds from the same essential building blocks as he does in his "Romantic" sonata. How does that work?  Bear with me, I'm doing this all from memory.

To get at this let's diverge way back into Haydn.  Haydn wrote plenty of monothematic sonata forms and so we can't say that what differentiates a theme in one segment or another is some simple principle of contrast.  There are, however, ways of contrasting forms of a single theme.  If we look at the "fifths" string quartet (Op 76, 2) we'll see that having a theme in one mode and then another provides a contrast.  Contrasting textural accompaniment is also useful.  Haydn might have a homophonic realization of a theme in block chords in one section and subject the same thematic idea to a contrapuntal ornamentation in the second group as well as having the theme in major rather than minor.

In Haydn's C sharp minor piano sonata we can see that the opening gesture is presented in bold octaves and followed up with delicate figuration that is an augmentation of a fragment of the initial gesture.  This idea is later brought back in the second group of the exposition and embellished with sequence and altered harmonic rhythm.  But the most significant contrast between "theme 1" and "theme 2" is that an idea bluntly stated in C sharp minor is presented in sequence in E major and with a rapidly descending bass line before expanding on the sequential ideas that appeared in the first theme.  The C sharp minor piano sonata has an exposition that consists of a handful of gestures that are developed in contrasting ways without adding any completely new material.

What Charles Rosen observed about Haydn's innovations in sonata form was that Haydn was able to compose accompaniment figures in first themes that were able to be developed into ideas with thematic significance later within the same musical form.  An idea in violin 2 in the opening sonata form of a string quartet could become thematic material for violin 1 to play later within the same exposition.  If we were to be very sloppy and attempt to put this in contrapuntal terms, a countersubject to a subject might become its own subject replete with exposition later in a double fugue and so it was, arguably, with Haydn's approach to sonata form. 

If the fugue could be considered the form through which composers expressed profound thoughts and feelings in the Baroque period that form became sonata form in the Classic period.  That Beethoven flirted with fusions of the two forms in his late works would help encourage this impression even if one did not agree that the fugue and the sonata form are the forms in their respective epochs through which a set of complementary yet contrasted ideas could be explored and developed.  While perhaps a composer today would find both fugue and sonata form antiquated it is possible to compose a type of monothematic sonata form in which theme 1 is taken as a subject and a theme 2 is composed as its countersubject, yet the two themes are presented with independent harmonic realizations in a sonata exposition and are recapitulated simultaneously as subject with countersubject in the recapitulation of a sonata form.  That may sound scholastic and I suppose it is but it's also fun.  Wenatchee has done it.  The more thoroughly a musician studies sonata form and fugue the more readily the two forms can be seen as companions dedicated to the exploration of ideas at the most abstract level.

Now all this is rather general for the reason that Ponce's sonatas are under copyright and we've no wish to breach that.  But if you've heard all of Ponce's sonatas let alone those of the early masters of classical guitar, you may already hear in your mind what I'm getting at, that there is a clarity of form in the best guitar sonatas that amplifies their emotional appeal.  Sor and Giuliani in later works paint on a canvas that seems too large for the kind of paintings they make.  Their use of cadential formula for flourishing technical displays can devour any ability to easily remember what their thematic ideas actually were. 

What arguably doesn't happen in guitar sonatas is a whole lot of what Rosen observed in the sonatas of Haydn, transforming little gestures in themes into thematic ideas later on.  Anyone who can show how this happens in guitar sonatas is welcome to discuss it, because the aim of this piece is not strictly polemical but to encourage a discussion of sonata forms for solo guitar.  We guitarists simply don't have the same level of contrapuntal liberties pianists or string quartets have so, naturally, it'd be difficult to develop sonata form in quite the same way Haydn did. 

But as Ponce's sonatas show, it is possible to establish structural differentiation in expositions and recapitulations to the point where each tune gets its moment to shine.  So how does Ponce and other composers do that?

At the risk of still being vague we can discuss ways in which a "theme" is marked out.  There may be two to three essential gestures in a theme and they may have contrasting potential within themselves.  Or as with Haydn's C sharp minor piano sonata the apparently single idea may have within itself fragments that are amenable to development at levels the untrained won't perceive.  An idea that sounds fine going forward in theme 1 may become the basis for theme 2 by being fragmented, transposed and sequenced.  However many fragments make up the initial phrase the composer's imagination will be able to discern their boundaries of developmental travel.

If you wanted to compose a monothematic sonata form keep in mind there's no rule that says the thing ever has to be the same thing twice.  You could go from block chord accompaniment in "theme 1" to alberti bass in "theme 2" while retaining the essential shape of the melody.  Haydn does this in a couple of his piano sonatas.  There's the obvious move of choosing contrasting modes. 

Less obvious ideas are to alter the harmonic rhythm of the theme.  You may have an opening theme with a brisk harmonic rhythm where the chords change every two beats and as a way to contrast "theme 1" from "theme 2" (even in this monothematic sonata form we're hypothetically dealing with) the harmonic rhythm in "theme 2" may be significantly slower.  Of course the mode could be different and be parallel minor or major or you might have a theme "1" with a pure mode that in theme "2" is subject to rapid modal mutation. You might even have theme 2 have a certain set of modal mutations in the exposition that are inverted in the recapitulation but so long as the gestural integrity and syntax of your initial ideas is preserved a listener will still hear that it's the same set of ideas you had in your sonata earlier.

The number of phrases in a theme become important.  If in theme 1 you have a square theme with four phrases that are four measures each then in your theme 2, even if you're using the same set of ideas as before, you might want to use three phrases of three measures each, perhaps in triple meter or 5/4.  The idea would be that you have several realms of contrast despite sharing gestures in common.  You can employ the contrast in the number of phrases and the length of the phrases.  You can contrast mode, you can contrast a sequential development of a single idea with a call-and-response development of having your idea met with a new and complementary or subsidiary idea. 

To put this in somewhat trite terms if you have a theme you like it will consist of a variety of fragments and ideas that you can break down.  Break them out into all the fragments you can easily recognize and do this for any accompaniment patterns you enjoy.  Figure out everything you can do with all of them and then once you've done that then go tackle the form itself.  In forms as abstract and esoteric as sonata and fugue "inspiration" is a worth ethic and a methodology--you toil until you find the inspired and what is most inspired among the possibilities--rather than some emotionally driven and riven spur of the moment.  Great musicians are able to create and perform music in a way that conveys spontaneity even if every single note has been meticulously planned from start to finish.  There's no essential conflict between care for every single note at a formal level and musical expression.  It's never "just notes" if you're serious about it and if it is "just notes" then you may not be entirely serious about it regardless of musical style. 

While it's good to talk about the feeling inherent within music there's a risk to it.  There's no truly "inhuman" music but there are many types of music and musical works that fail to lodge in the heart.  This is, just to be argumentative about it, a problem of memory.  Musical form relies on the power of associative memory.  For our brains to grasp the emotional content of any given musical moment we have to have enough associative memory at hand to grasp the grammar and syntax and language we're being presented.  If Haydn gives us an exposition in the C sharp minor piano sonata where an idea is thoroughly developed then if he abandons developing the idea in his recapitulation this surprises us but does not shock us because Haydn adheres to a concept of balance within and across forms. 

The ideas that he develops in the C sharp minor piano sonata first movement in the recapitulation were ideas that did not get as much development in the exposition or even the development.  The principle of developmental extension within the form gave Haydn room to develop the previously undeveloped phrases to pleasing conclusions.  To someone bent on the idea that sonata forms have to have recapitulations without development, or committed to the idea that what happened in the exposition has to come back the same way Haydn reveals that it doesn't have to be that way.  As previously said, Haydn's commitment to development across the sonata form gives him freedom to both surprise us by not recapitulating in the scholastic way we would have been told to expect in a musicology class but to satisfy us by developing the phrases in the recapitulation in the structural order in which they appeared in the exposition.  The larger point of structural differentiation within and across the parts of the sonata form have still been preserved. 

As balancing the artistic imperative to both surprise and satisfy Haydn was obviously a master.  That no guitarist-composer has ever approached Haydn's level of mastery is not really a surprise given the significant limitations of our instrument and yet it's possible to say that just because we live in the 21st century does not mean there's nothing more to be done with fusty old sonata form or fugue, still less does it mean that a single guitar played by a guitarist somehow can't do much with these challenging forms just because the average guitarist isn't interested in the conceptual and physical demands sonata and fugue obviously make on the mind and body.  The violin literature is full of music that at some point or another was declared unplayable or unmusical.  The guitar is at a stage now where idiomatic possibility is almost moot given the feats virtuosi are capable of now.  Why not begin to explore the older forms like sonata and fugue for solo guitar precisely so that we can, as it were "catch up" to what has been available in keyboard literature for centuries?  And, while we're at it, there's obviously more old music that has sat in near oblivion for decades by composers like Rebay and Matiegka.  We don't have to only make new stuff and not appreciate the old.

For those guitarist composers who are interested in sonata form and what is possible for a person to do with a single guitar in that form, here's at least some ideas for consideration, such as they are. A great fugue and a great sonata have their own thematic and development economic efficiency, for want of a more "artistic" set of terms, and if that seems too mechanistic let's not forget that in earlier eras of music that preceded the Enlightenment medieval scholastics could still group music, for instance, with a set of applied sciences like astronomy and geometry.  Similar thought was found in the Greeks.  Music was seen as expressing kind of telos for the cosmosbut we should abandon any pretense that any one culture necessarily arrived at the same set of ideas.  But this blog post isn't about a defense or attack on tonal music in the West in common practice.  It's just a rambling rumination on a specific form in the common practice style and what we guitarists may be able to do with it given what we hear in sonatas of old.