This is probably going to be the last post of 2024 and so it's going to be a relatively short and practical one and focused just on practical ways to develop an approach to sonata forms that draws upon ragtime and blues vocabularies, with an eye toward blurring the boundaries between sonata forms and continuous variation forms (single and double themes)
As very
longtime readers will know I had a project back in 2020 called Ragtime andSonata Forms in which I laid out a very abstract case for the compatibility
of ragtime strains with sonata forms and noted the length of the tradition in
which ragtime drew upon “ragging the classics” for material.
To give practical examples from … someone I know … it’s
possible to write a ragtime sonata and fugue drawing on ideas from Matiegka’s
guitar sonatas for the prelude and an original idea for the fugue.
In this work a ragtime sonata using themes from Matiegka's Op.
31, No. 1: I. and Op. 16: I guitar sonatas got made that has no separate
modulating transitions because there don’t need to be. If as William Caplin and others have noted,
slow sonata movements don’t even have to have transitions then there’s no need
for transitions between themes in different keys and Matiegka demonstrated that
in recapitulations transitions can be dispensed with entirely even when they
appeared in expositions.
But it may be necessary to have transitions between themes
when themes are relatively short or, for instance, Theme 2 doesn’t even start
on the tonic chord. This particular
detail about non-tonic chords starting off secondary themes in sonata forms was
observed by Jason Yust in his dense and difficult but rewarding book Organized
Time (Oxford University Press).
It’s possible to write a blues-inspired (though not exactly
“bluesy” sonata that does have a modulating transition.
Having noted elsewhere that Matiegka used V7/V
to V to IV progressions, it’s important to note that what the V to IV
progression is used for makes a difference in whether or not the usage is
blues-derived. If you set up a half
cadence that is intended to drive toward the tonic of a new key then the V to
IV regression progression can be a way to introduce a blues theme that is made
from a IV to I7 alternation groove rather than just starting on the
tonic of the new key. It is a type of
deceptive cadence that moves away from the dominant but not to the “expected”
submediant because in blues harmony there’s no automatic need for a deceptive
cadence to move from the dominant to a submediant. In blues a V to IV progression wouldn’t even
be deceptive, it would be a chord progression we expect.
In slow compound meter blues, for that matter, the V to IV
progression can be used to create a modulating phrase that allows a variation
form on a 12-bar blues theme to function as a sonata. If you start in E minor then on the second
pass through the 12 measures of blues you can use a V to IV to VII progression
and the subtonic effects a modulation from E minor to G major and you can start
the third variation on the blues theme in the relative major and by the time
you have played through it you have a complete sonata exposition using a 12-bar
blues theme and have no separate modulating transition passages.
Thus …
Continuous variation form that blurs the distinctions
between sonata forms can be fairly easily done in monothematic sonata forms,
even in movements with upbeat materials.
There may be a need to create a blues theme with a few identifiable chunks,
though. Instead of using Hepokoski and
Darcy’s concept of rotation for different themes it can be used as an
intra-thematic set of gestural relationships. In other words, “rotation” can
refer to the order in which riffs should appear in a blues theme in the
expositional presentation which is abandoned in the developing/developmental
variations before the recapitulation.
But if you wanted to use the concept of rotation to create
a blues-based sonata then the concept can be used and you can dispense with
separate modulating passages. Any blues
or ragtime theme tends to have a set of variable endings which can effect
modulations and transitions without the need for extended passages. Double variation can be a way to order themes
across a large-scale form.
With this double variation approach to using rotation it’s
even practical to develop a sonata form that has two themes that are played
using bottleneck technique. Hardly
anything can be more bluesy (or country) than slide guitar riffs.
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