Matiegka: Six Sonates Progressives Op. 31 Sonata No. 1 in C major, a gently jokey sonata form that recapitulates Theme 1 in the wrong key and course-corrects halfway through, some thoughts on composers who couldn't break rules that weren't codified yet

Finally, I'm getting around to writing about Matiegka's Op. 31, No. 1 solo guitar sonata

Wenzaslaus Thomas Matiegka (1773 to 1830) was a Bohemian guitarist who composed many works for guitar in solo and chamber settings. He also wrote choral music, about which we know very little.  Stanley Yates’ edition of Matiegka’s guitar sonatas mentions that he studied law, worked for a time as an actuary and eventually became a kappelmeister who set aside composing for the guitar in favor of liturgical music.

Matiegka’s style, as Yates also notes, was on the conservative side.  The influence of Haydn is obvious yet Matiegka also arranged Beethoven works, showing that however conservative he was by the standards of his time and place the composer was aware of more leading edge activities.

But having spent some time reading Robert Gjerndingen’s Music in the Galant Style it might be helpful to clarify what it might mean to say Matiegka was a “conservative” composer in a kappelmeister tradition.  For that matter, Dana Gooley’s monograph on improvisation in the Romantic era may be useful, too, for Gooley pointed out that it was within the context of church music that traditions of improvisation were retained in a nineteenth century Europe that was increasingly moving away from improvisation. Which in a lot of ways is moot because there’s no evidence Matiegka was concertizing.  Who, working in fields related to law, actuarial work or teaching in a church context would have time to give a lot of guitar recitals anyway? 

All that said, admirers of Romantic music are apt to find Matiegka’s work trivial because his work does so audibly register as more galant than Romantic with a capital `R’.   Yates points out in his edition that Matiegka’s Op. 31 progressive sonatas are not concert works but they are worth studying.  I would say they are and I’ve been intending to write about them for some time. 

I want to work from the proposal that we assess Matiegka’s sonatas as residually galant rather than Romantic in an effort to not find his work wanting because he’s not a Sor or a Giuliani, let alone a Beethoven.  Nothing against Beethoven as such but I hope guitarists don’t find Matiegka wanting on the basis of any residual cult of Beethoven style veneration.  Matiegka is too playful and his work too immersed in the humor of Haydn to ever fit into a Beethovenian cast, which is why I would never say Matiegka can be thought of as a “Beethoven” of the guitar.  With the introduction out of the way I want to jump into discussing Matiegka’s Op. 31, Sonata No. 1 in C major, with reference to Giulio Tampalini’s recording from Brilliant Classics and Stanley Yates’ edition of Matiegka’s sonatas.

movement 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uhpa99nxTk

Almost nothing could signal more strongly that Matiegka works with a galant set of gestures than his opening statement.  With the caveat that he begins on the third scale degree and rises through the fourth to the fifth scale degrees, Matiegka’s opening gambit is as do-re-mi as possible, an antecedent phrase answered by a decorous single-line response which leads to a continuation phrase in which the melody features a ti-do-re transposition of the opening phrase.  The second larger phrase is a simple dominant transposition with re-mi-fa “answer” to the four-measure opening phrase, leading to a slide up to the leading tone that descends to a weak I-V-I statement at measure 7 that rounds off the opening theme with a simple antecedent-consequent pattern. 

At measure 9 (0:11) Yates designates this new material as the second half of the first theme.  That’s possible, although I think this can also be regarded as the start of the transition. The droning C lower pedal point withstanding I think at a gestural level this second phrase for Theme 1 or the start of the transition can be described as a Fenaroli pattern, which is to say Matiegka has a four-measure phrase where the melody takes up F, E, B, and C at the start of each measure. This phrase is repeated with some changes but retains the core linear pattern.  

If I liken this opening theme to a ragtime strain then it’s got the split-in-half structure you often seen in ragtime where the first half of the theme is somewhat incomplete and is rounded off by a shorter four-measure gesture that provides a firm cadence and then repeats before moving on to new material.  Guitar sonatas being what they are, Matiegka’s droning pedal tone on C at the bottom could trick inattentive listeners into thinking he doesn’t have authentic cadences. They’re there but guitarists, I trust, know that authentic cadences that are obscured by droning pedal tones don’t cease to exist because many a guitarist likes to keep a steady rhythm going.

Yates designates the modulating transition as starting at measure 16 (0:25 in Tampalini’s recording).  Sometimes I think that the transition begins as early as measure 9 but the argument in favor of measure 16 is that Matiegka has dropped his droning pedal tone in favor of call and response two-voice imitative writing.  I feel obliged to point out that this is unusual in transitions for guitar sonatas from this period.  In many early nineteenth century guitar sonatas I’ve looked at transitions can often be where rhythmic and melodic activity picks up after an opening theme has been made, Matiegka’s Grand Sonata No. 1 comes to mind as an example.

So, sure, Yates’ designation of the transition starting at measure 16 is a pretty well-grounded call.

The transition is a simple imitative episode with two core phrases (mm 16-19, and mm 20-27). The initial phrase in the transition moves through the following chords: C, G, D7, and G, these set up the second, longer phrase in the transition.  The second phrase also runs through C, G, D7 and G, and in this second phrase the counterpoint is a little busier while retaining the two-voiced texture. At measure 23 the half cadence of the second phrase gets extended, and the G of measure 23 gets a deceptive resolution to A7 at measure 24, which allows for a D variant of the measure 23 melody which leads to a reprise of measure 24 at measure 26 which, in turn, leads to a strong authentic cadence on D major at measure 27 (0:45).  This is, however, obviously a half cadence that sets up the entrance of the second theme in G major. 

It might be worth pointing out this obvious point but a modulating transition can have strong cadential gestures that destabilize the key the music is in or consolidates a new key.  Matiegka took a pretty simple path here by having the half cadence in C major deceptively resolve to an A7 harmony that let him use melodic sequence that treated D as a new temporary key region to establish an authentic cadence on D. The strong cadence from A7 to D can’t be felt as modulating to D because the tonal shift is pretty rapid and because the resulting authentic cadence of the A7 to D uses a secondary dominant chord to destabilize C. 

As my composition instructor told me long ago, when you want to modulate from the tonic key to the dominant key you need to introduce the leading tone of the dominant and the leading tone of the dominant of the dominant.  In this case Matiegka has done a pretty “textbook” modulation by introducing the leading tone of the dominant key (F#) at measure 18 (0:28) and then introduces the leading tone to the dominant of the dominant key (which, to be clear, would be the A7 to D circle progression) at measure 24 (0:37).  Even though the A7 to D shift at measures 24-25 is strong, it’s not strong enough by itself to prepare a D major chord to function as the dominant of the new key, which is why Matiegka repeats the phrase for emphasis at measures 26-27 and lands us on a second strong A7-D cadence by measure 27 at 0:45. 

A modulating transition should both destabilize the old key and create a strong drive to the new key, and while Matiegka’s approach is pretty simple and pretty “textbook”, but Yates has pointed out that Matiegka wrote a number of works that are for amateurs and not meant to be concert works.  So we can think of Matiegka’s Op. 31 as an excellent primer for any guitarist who wants a fairly smaller-scale introduction to what sonata forms for solo guitar can sound like. We’ve gotten just three-quarters of a minute into our exposition and Matiegka has set us up for the entrance of Theme 2 in the dominant key, which is as “textbook” as you can get for a sonata form.

Theme 2, it turns out, opens with the same idea as Theme 1, which shows just how indebted to Haydn Matiegka was.  Haydn and Clementi were both known to write what some scholars have called “monothematic” sonata forms.  Hepokoski and Darcy reject this older label in their work Elements of Sonata Theory and favor saying that Theme 1 should be thought of as P and that a “monothematic” sonata will have a secondary theme (S) in which S is P-derived.  That sure seems like a fancy way of saying that Theme 1 and Theme 2 are derived from the same core idea to me and I’m not sure Hepokoski and Darcy need to be so dogged about this particular point. 

When Theme 2 shows up at measure 28 (0:44) it sounds pretty much like Theme 1 and pretty much is Theme 1 until Matiegka gets to place that would correspond with the second half of Theme 1 (measure 35, 0:59).  Once he gets to the half cadence he extends the dominant pedal moment into a marching theme within a theme.  The melody is now active in the bass strings and marches along through measure 40 (1:08) that outlines an E7, A7, D, G phrase that couldn’t be more “guitaristic” and would fit in pretty well in a ragtime strain I might add. The dominant pedal passage is still getting prolonged at easure 42 (1:06) and doesn’t resolve to a firm authentic cadence (kind of) until measure 45 (1:13).  

Firm, but brief, because this Theme 2 is where Matiegka deploys phrase prolongation in his Theme 2 knowing we’ll remember at least generally what he did in Theme 1.  Think of it as being like a singer songwriter who played you a verse and chorus and then when coming back to the verse and chorus the second time around decides to sit on the pre-chorus passage for a long, long time to milk the moment. That’s what Matiegka is doing here and since his Theme 2 is obviously based on the same opening material as Theme the places where he can shake things up and surprise don’t come from how he starts but how and where he ends.

So Matiegka has by measure 45 gotten us to what would correspond to the second half of Theme 1, and is in the second part of his Theme 2 space.  It’s here at measure 45 (1:15) he runs with a leap from the root to the sixth followed by descending scale runs that he used back in measure 6 and he, well, runs with this idea for four measures.  Then at measure 50 (1:24ish) he brings back the quasi-rag E7-A7-D-G chain phrase and extends it.  The new extended phrase goes through the following chords: E7, A7, D, G, C, B7, Em. He’s landed us with an authentic cadence in the submediant of the dominant key, still firmly arriving either at harmonically and melodically strong but rhythmically cut-off cadences in the “right” key or strong resolutions to a “wrong” key to keep extending Theme 2. 

At measure 54 (01:24) he brings back the marching material that extended and prolonged his half-cadence in the first part of Theme 2, this time in G major, his new tonic key.  What he had used earlier to postpone and delay his intra-thematic resolution to the tonic is now used to reinforce the tonic in a new set of closing phrases.  The move from E minor to G major isn’t a very strong move in terms of functional harmony but Matiegka can get away with this at a syntactic level because he’s using an earlier idea that was used to push us “away” from the tonic to affirm the tonic and build momentum toward his completion of the exposition.

This new phrase starting at mm 54 has a high G ringing out in marching rhythms as the bass strings take up a kind of rising “chorale” idea in sixths that moves through the following scale degrees: 1, 2, 2# ,3, 4, and closing on 4# (C# fully diminished in first inversion). Once again Matiegka is not going to just “end” the second theme.  So the fully diminished seventh chord is at measure 56 and at 1:34 in the exposition. 

Now so far Theme 2 confirms a generalization that shows up in discussions about second themes in sonata forms. Theorists have pointed out that Theme 2 themes are often more loosely organized than Theme 1 ideas. Another way to put it is that given their place in the syntactic script of an exposition a second or third theme in a sonata is supposed to drive toward its harmonic/melodic/rhythmic resolution moment firmly enough that its end can simultaneously become the beginning of the next moment in the work. 

In this case the exposition needs to end on a G strong enough to be a strong resolving cadence in G major that will do two things: 1) comparably resolve to C major when Theme 2 shows up in the tonic key in the recapitulation and 2) be strong enough in establishing an authentic cadence to achieve for a return to the tonic key of C major what was accomplished by the A7-D phrases in the modulating transition.  The aim is to see to it that these modules of music are mutually reinforcing and capable of being both recursive (going back to themselves) and discursive (able to move on to a new idea in the development at the same time.

With that “grand pause” to explain why Matiegka seems so set on avoiding and delaying a strong resolution for any of his phrases in Theme 2 we get back to Theme 2.  The fully diminished seventh chord is met with a half measure of silence and in the second half of measure 57 he sets us up with a second inversion tonic chord that dances up arpeggios of the tonic for Theme 2 and the second inversion tonic chord is going to go exactly where we’re told it should go, toward setting up a V-I progression that finally wraps up Theme 2 with a perfect authentic cadence at measures 60-61 (1:40).  Yates notes in his edition there’s a little Coda from mm 61-65. This Coda consists pretty simply of two very strong V-I cadences that make sure we’ve ended soundly on G major, the tonic key of Theme 2 and … we get a complete repeat of the exposition. 

A couple of things stand out about this exposition. The first is how utterly modular it is, which I’m fine with because I like eighteenth century music and I also enjoy a fair amount of popular music, too.  It’s easier to talk about potential crossover points between a Matiegka solo guitar sonata and a pop song because guitarists tend to work at smaller scales than pianists and symphonists do.  It’s easier to, for instance, say that Theme 2 gets a lot of mileage on delaying the cadential arrival points that were so simply and firmly given us by Matiegka in Theme 1 in the first half minute of the exposition. 

Now for those who have played with the idea that a pop song could have a verse-chorus exposition there’s … sort of … a case to be made that Matiegka gives us something like that here but with an important modification.  If we say that Matiegka has written a functionally monothematic sonata form and we also want to compare this sonata to the structural patterns of a pop song then we could say that Theme 1 is a very simple verse and chorus binary form. The transition is the bridge between Theme 1 and the appearance of Theme 2 in the dominant key.  Theme 2, in this case, can be thought of as a return of Theme 1 with a couple of over-the-top Paul McCartney style prolongations of cadential arrival points.  Maybe Matiegka is amazed at the way we love him all the time or something and just won’t bring himself to resolve Theme 2 until he’s milked every side harmony of the moments he wants to get from them. 

We can hear how Theme 2 is fundamentally a continuation of the key idea from Theme 1 but Matiegka extends the “flow” of his Theme 2 by having it spill beyond the bounds of the phrase-lengths and module sizes he set up in Theme 1 at the start of his exposition. 

If we want to think of this Op. 31, No. 1 sonata as having an exposition explicable more in terms of ragtime then Theme 1 has a sixteen measure opening strain in C major and the transition uses call and response counterpoint to lead to Theme 2 and that turns out to be a biggie-sized derivation of Theme 1 in which the second theme module, once we throw in all the extended half cadences and evaded cadences and interruptions spans from measures 28-61! Theme 2 is roughly twice as long as Theme 1.

I have to underline this point, Matiegka’s entire exposition is a mere 1:46. With a full repeat of the exposition the run time in Giulio Tampalini’s performance has the second statement of the exposition reaching its final cadence at 3:27.  The exposition has been played in its entirety in the time it would take to hear an entire pop song.  Yes, the exposition is just a part of the sonata form as a whole but if I take as given the claim that early nineteenth-century guitarists tended to have more conservative styles than their pianist peers we’ve got a case from such a claim to assess early guitar sonatas more as galant than Romantic music.

Now after the exposition has been played twice we get to the development section.at measure 66 (3:28 in the Tampalini performance).  Had Tampalini omitted the repeat of the exposition as can happen in many a performance, it might be harder to hear the ways in which Theme 2 is built around delaying or extending cadential arrival points in Theme 2 in contrast to Theme 1. Unless you’re a guitarist reading along with the score or someone so steeped in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century musical styles you could hear the first time through what Matiegka was doing there’s probably no chance in the first one and a half minutes of a performance that you would have picked up much of the stuff I have just written about, unless Matiegka is your speciality and then I don’t need to explain this stuff because you have the scores and probably even saw engraving plates.

In order to get a sense that there’s any development we needed to hear that exposition twice and we’ll get to hear the development twice, which I’ll get to at length.

The development begins with a sequential extension of the riff in the coda, again at measure 66 (3:28). Matiegka simply sequences the little serpentine riff from the coda up a whole step.  The effect is kicking the key from G major into … well … it seems that we’re in A minor at the start of the development to go by the imperfect authentic cadence at mm 67-68 and then there’s a B7 to E cadence in the next two measures.  By measures 71-72 we are, indeed, firmly sure we’re in A minor. Although in larger-scale sonata forms the development section is where a composer tries out a variety of keys in such a small-scale sonata as this we discover Matiegka moves to A minor and basically stays there. We’ll find out why before too long but the “why” involves a trick I’ll get to when the time is right.

As developments go this is pretty simple stuff—the composer sequences an idea from the coda of the exposition a few times, acts like he’s going to set something up for moving into new directions (cycling through chords C to F, F to C, E minor to B7, B7 to E) but at measure 85 (3:49) all of that has just gotten us back to a half cadence on E7 that can only seemingly take us to A minor, the key the development has basically been in this whole time.  With an explosion of scurrying rising arpeggios that float above a droning, pulsing E pedal point on the open sixth, Matiegka hammers away on a half-cadence passage that spans mm 85-98. He’s really building up to a big climactic moment that’s going to happen in either A minor or A major so what is it?

At measure 104 (4:16) we find out what all this set up was for, the appearance of Theme 1 in A major.  There are a few gentle decorations in the first phrase but we’re clearly running with Theme 1.  The thing is, we have a question.  Is this still development?  It could be, but we’ll discover that this is actually the start of the recapitulation. The problem is that if this were a “textbook” sonata Matiegka should have come back to C major and not A major.  What’s he going to do next?

The second phrase of Theme 1 is presented in A minor at mm 108-115 and it’s here that Matiegka’s debt to Haydn can be heard. This is the part of Theme 1 in which there’s a mid-course correction on the tonality of Theme 1 as if to say “Sorry, my bad. I know I was supposed to get us to C major but I started the recapitulation in the wrong key!”  In this second phrase Matiegka has his melody and harmony move through A minor to E7 and back to A minor, and his scale-run moves from F down through A before he introduces the chordal motto of Theme 1 moving through G-C-G with 2^nd, 1^st and 1^st inversion forms of those chords respectively.  He’s pivoting mid-phrase back into C major. By mm 112-115 he’s finally brought back the melody and voicings that appeared in Theme 1 in its exposition form.  He’s course-correcting the key so that by the second half of Theme 1 he’ll finally be back in C major, which shows up on cue at measure 115 (4:39)

The second half of Theme 1 arriving in C major ensures that the recapitulation is finally doing what it’s expected to do. In the jargon Hepokoski and Darcy use in Elements of Sonata Theory, what Matiegka has done might be considered a second-level deformation, that is to say that he’s started his recapitulation in a deliberately “wrong” key and continued to develop/mutate Theme 1 within what H&D would call the recapitulation zone.  Choosing to recapitulate part of Theme 1 in a wrong key was something Matiegka did in Grand Sonata I, movement 1.

Theme 1 rounds off as it appeared in the exposition and at measure 133 the transition begins (4:52).  What happens he is another “not textbook” moment.  Matiegka truncates the imitative writing in the transition and introduces the marching sub-theme from Theme 2 at measure 131 (5:04). The initial Theme 1 derived phrase that started Theme 2 in the exposition has been jettisoned. It’s easy to hear why since Matiegka used that chordal motto no less than four times in the repeating exposition and also had the idea come back in Theme 1 where the motto appeared in a sequence of modal mutations. 

By way of synechdoche, Matiegka drops material from Theme 2 that was replicated earlier in the sonata movement within Theme 1.  This is paradoxically “textbook” inasmuch as Charles Rosen and others have pointed out that in the recapitulation it’s more critical for materials that were not in the tonic key to be presented in the tonic key in eighteenth century style sonata forms.  Matiegka’s not doing what a nineteenth century theorist would have said he “should have” done means that he was following the norms of eighteenth century compositional norms he picked up in his formative years.  The parts that really identify Theme 2 as Theme 2 get brought back in the recapitulation, even if they are substantially pared down. We’ll hear why when the second repetition of the development-recapitulation half of the sonata form comes up.

Now at measure 131 (5:10) we hear a reprise of the chain of fourths progression as the bare chords moving beneath the marching rhythm on the high E string on the note G, the chords being C# diminished, D, G# diminished, and A minor. The chords aren’t exactly the same but every guitarist has discovered there are passages that work well in a key like G major that are too awkward to transpose into C major without changes What’s more most scholars on sonata as a form point out that recomposing thematic materials is common in late Classic or early Romantic styles, not least in works by Haydn, who we have established Matiegka was a conspicuous influence on Matiegka’s approach in earlier writings.  Each part of Theme 2 that appeared in the exposition makes a quick appearance but is over quickly in the recapitulation.  The closing half of Theme 2 arrives and moves predictably enough to the Coda, which is extended, reaching it’s perfect authentic cadence at measure 160 (5:46).

Then we’re immediately back in the development (0:48).  Matiegka has called for a full repeat of the development and recapitulation, which is one of the key indicators of how conservative his approach to sonata form was in the early 1800s.  By this time plenty of composers who wrote for the piano, wrote symphonies, and wrote quartets might have repeating expositions but a repetition of the complete development and recapitulation was pretty rare by the nineteenth century. 

I might be alone here but this sonata movement is really funny.  I’ve soaked up so much of Haydn’s music that I hear his kind of humor in Matiegka’s deliberately wrong-key recapitulation of Theme 1 in A major that has to get fixed, as it were, on the fly so that Matiegka’s shoving the music of Theme 1 through A major and A minor and setting up cadence points so that he can get the second half of Theme 1 in the right key by the time the non-modulating transition happens.  If you soak up enough eighteenth century music to know that audiences and performers would have expected a “real” recapitulation that started in C major and stayed there then Matiegka’s joke is easier to understand even if you don’t personally think it’s funny. 

In a similar way the way Matiegka jettisons the Theme 1 materials from Theme 2 in the recapitulation is something to keep in mind.  It’s the kind of musical joke only musicians may fully appreciate but it’s something to understand if you ever take up this piece to perform it.  Matiegka paid tribute to Haydn in so many ways in his music that you can see that for yourself if you study the scores  of both composers.  If, however, you haven’t, I want to make sure I spell out the ways I hear and see in Matiegka’s work that he took Haydn as one of his key inspirations.

What Matiegka has in common with Anton Diabelli is a practice of dropping ideas in recapitulations that got a lot of play time in the exposition or development.  It can make analyzing his sonata forms tricky if you don’t know this about him, especially if you go into his sonata movements expecting them to be “textbook”. If you know in advance how much he was influenced by Haydn’s flexible and overtly jokey style you won’t be thrown off so much when he does something like what he did in the development of this opening sonata movement and build a great big dominant pedal point of the sort that “should” be in a sonata development only to have it be on the wrong dominant that forces the recapitulation to start in the wrong key. 

The polarity between the “should” key of C major and the “I like this better” key of A minor/A major will be a thread running throughout this little sonata.

movement 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgjtUATCjA0

Yet another way in which Matiegka reveals his debt to Haydn is placing a brisk and charming menuetto after his defiantly jocular sonata form.  Haydn scholars have pointed out that when Haydn did something unusually complex or weird in his opening sonata he tended to place the menuet after the sonata rather than the more usual slow variation or slow sonata movement.

The menuet part of the menuetto (a.k.a the A of the larger ABA structure that these movements tend to have) elapses quickly in 46 seconds even with all the structurally observed repeats.  The opening C major theme is simple and clear in terms of its substance.  The intervening Trio begins in a gentle C major at 0:47 and seems at first like it will stay in that key but by 0:55 we discover the music has mutated into an authentic cadence ending in the  relative minor key.  As with the opening sonata movement, this menuetto has a middle theme that seems like it should stay in the initial key but sets up a cadence in the submediant key. This phrase, as so often with Trio sections, repeats. 

The continuation phrase in the Trio reprises the chain of fourths idea from the sonata movement and gently waltzes through A(7) to D to G(7) to C before nestling into an E dominant 7 pedal passage that seems sure to keep the music in A minor but …

Nope, of course, not. At 1:20 we hear the gentle C major chord that started the Trio theme. Matiegka is still running with the esoteric musical gag in which he’ll build up to half cadences in the wrong key and then all of a sudden kick the tonality back to where it should be; the Trio theme resumes in C major after the E7 pedal passage as if the pedal point had been on G7 rather than E7 all the while.

At 1:31 the secondary part of the Trio is played with embellishing arpeggios. At 1:41 the return to C major passage of the Trio is taken up but in the lower strings and as a somewhat free inversion. This might be a point to mention that it’s here that Matiegka seems to reflect a pattern in early nineteenth and later nineteenth century composing to write out variations on what in earlier approaches to menuets would have had more consistently literal repetitions of the themes.

Another quirky trait is his decision to repeat the entirety of the secondary phrase of the Trio even though he’s written out variations within the Trio, a kind of double the doubling move that makes the Trio significantly larger than the Menuetto that surrounds it. 

movement 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkr4en1jkls

As with all six of the Op. 31 sonatas, No. 1 in C major is a three-movement work. The third and final movement is a short Rondo.  This title seems like a misnomer because normally a rondo is defined as having five, seven or nine parts and the archetypal five-part rondo maps out as ABACA.  This is more of a semi-grand ternary form with a theme in C major, a middle theme in A minor, and a return of the C major theme and a coda.  I suppose that could be mapped out as ABAC but because the refrain theme doesn’t come back at the end this “Rondo” isn’t really a Rondo, but as I was writing earlier there’s all kinds of little details in this sonata that are musical jokes. 

As noted above, the themes for this finale are in C major and A minor. There’s a conspicuous reprise of the secondary phrase from the Trio theme in the previous movement in the middle of this finale in the A minor theme, which is a natural place for it show up.  That’s a post-Beethoven technique, to generalize, that Matiegka picked up, bringing back thematic ideas that had appeared earlier in a cyclical work. 

Of course this is such a small-scale sonata for solo guitar nobody who plays Beethoven or teaches Beethoven would be likely to think of this as reflecting anything about Beethoven.  Matiegka was known to have arranged some Beethoven for chamber ensemble including the guitar, though, and was enough a contemporary of Schubert for the latter composer to recompose one of Matiegka’s trios into a quartet—the Bohemian guitarist composer who worked as a kappelmeister managed to be mostly conservative but also reflected his times even if by the ideologies and aesthetics of his era he was perhaps “behind the times”.

Now obvious I spent far more time discussing his opening sonata form than I’ve spent talking about his Menuetto or Rondo and I’ve done so with Matiegka’s work because while his work is typically described as “conservative” I think Op. 31, No. 1 in C major is a good example of how even a “conservative” solo guitar sonata was not following “the rules” that were laid down by nineteenth century pedagogy regarding what a sonata form was expected to be.  Being “old school” may have meant Matiegka didn’t feel obliged to follow “the rules” that were getting laid down by nineteenth century theories because they had not been formalized.  How can you break the rules if the rules haven’t actually been codified yet? 

There were conventions and norms, of course, and many of those were established by Haydn but, again, go look through hundreds of Haydn sonata movements and you’ll find he didn’t feel particularly obliged to follow “the rules”, either.  A good deal of the Beethoven mystique that had him as the rule-breaker and envelope-expander supreme was, to put it harshly, the Romantic era hype machine.  Beethoven was an ambitious composer but you can hear his Grosse Fugue as cast in a very straightforward five-part rondo at its most macro macro-structural level, and a five-part rondo isn’t rule-breaking at all, it’s the way Beethoven saw fit to organize a colossally complex fugue. When you can hear Beethoven’s later string quartets with this in mind his most apparently revolutionary end for a string quartet in his day was, once you heard past the polyphonic surface to is underlying structural units, couldn’t have been a more straightforward five-part rondo of the kind that was often used to end string quartets in the eighteenth century. 

Of course, having said that, it can take a fairly advanced level of structural listening to work out that the great big fugue can nonetheless be appreciated as having such a simple ABA’CA” structure.  Ideally that’s the kind of thing people might be expected to learn in music schools or through study of forms or just listening to music for enough decades that the structural and syntactic simplicity beneath the surface complexity becomes easier to hear.

Every composer who works at that level of complexity has to start at a far simpler level and that far simpler level is where Matiegka is working in the Op. 31 sonatas for guitar.  They aren’t “worse” or “better” than Beethoven for being simpler, that all depends on what your aesthetic and ideological concerns about what music ought to be may happen to be.  I happen to enjoy Beethoven’s Op. 111 piano sonata and also Matiegka’s Op. 31, No.1.  What is more I would advise musicians and music theorists that there’s something fun to be heard and learned in both of the sonatas, whether the big and ambitious Beethoven piano sonata or the playful and light-hearted Matiegka solo guitar sonata.

Matiegka, even among those who even know who he is, can tend to be thought of as "okay" or as a trivial composer. In terms of Matiegka's melodic writing I frankly enjoy him more than Sor and I admit it's because I'm such a big fan of Haydn that Matiegka's Haydn-by-guitar vibe is more fun for me than Sor's "Beethoven of the Guitar" biggie-size approach in Op. 22 or Op. 25.  It's not that I don't like Sor, even, it's that I'm so much a Haydn fan that guitarists who hew more to Haydn's playfulness are more up my ally than those who aspired to Beethovenian sublime.  As Richard Taruskin has argued in Cursed Questions, Haydn has his own musical sublime for people who are willing to hear it but that's another topic for another time.

POSTSCRIPT 7-5-2020
There's a more general review of Tampalini's Matiegka box set released through Brilliant Classics at the local Seattle Classic Guitar Society newsletter, published in the 2019 May/June newsletter
https://www.seattleguitar.org/soundings603.pdf

POSTSCRIPT 9-5-2021

Here it is more than a year later and thanks to IMSLP I have managed to get ahold of a public domain PDF form of the sonatas 1, 2, 5 and 6 and that means ... an annotated analysis in-score of Matiegka's Op. 31, No. 1 sonata I wasn't able to provide when I originally wrote the strictly text analysis I published.