The Peak of Western Music: Symphonies and Sonatas

So what is pure music—a sonata or a symphony—if not just sound waves?

In English, we call music that is sung a song and music that is played on an instrument a piece. In Italian, a cantata is sung, and a sonata—literally “sounded”—is played.

It is our most generic of titles, the most “absolute” of absolute music—music played (and named) for the instrument(s) that play it, like “Piano Sonata” or “Sonata for Piano and Violin.”

For some reason, when more than two people are playing, the word “Sonata” is typically dropped from the title, replaced by the group name. Instead of “Sonata for String Quartet,” we just say, “String Quartet.” Instead of saying “Sonata for Piano and Orchestra,” we say, “Piano Concerto” (concerto meaning a soloist playing with an Orchestra).

And, instead of saying, “Sonata for Symphony Orchestra,” we just say, “Symphony.” ^💬

The Sonata-Allegro

Pieces of this genre, titled Sonata, Symphony, etc. typically take on three or four movements: a fast (Allegro) opening movement, a slow middle movement, an optional lighter scherzo movement, and a fast finale. There are a great deal of exceptions, of course, but the chapters that follow will discuss each of these types of music.

The first movement, and the subject of this chapter, takes its name from its overall genre, and is (perhaps confusingly) called sonata form or more specifically, Sonata-allegro form. Allegro is the Italian tempo marking for a faster piece that signals this movement, often with modifiers, like “Allegro con brio” (with fire) or “Allegro appassionato” (passionate).

The sonata form is most simply, a form that: 1) identifies “home” 2) leaves home 3) returns home. This makes it our most narrative form, consisting of a beginning, a middle and an end, or in musical terminology, an exposition, development, and recap (short for recapitulation).

This story is reinforced with both the melody and the harmony.

First, let's look at how it's done with melody. There is a more prescriptive version of the sonata form that approaches something like the “hero's journey” (and whose rules are broken more often than not). In the exposition, there is a strong, bold first theme that establishes the key, followed by a lyrical and beautiful second theme in a related key. Theorists used to call these “masculine” and “feminine.” The exposition is often repeated so we can remember what we've heard.

In the free-wheeling development, the composer takes the main material from the exposition and goes crazy with it, as in a theme and variations. We end up with themes deconstructed, in far off keys we would never have predicted.

And then finally in the recapitulation we return home and hear the original themes again—this time both in their original key, sometimes with a surprise or two, like a coda added to the end for a big finish.

This melodic approach to storytelling, which amounts, basically to “remember the opening theme and hear it change”—would make it seem simple to follow a sonata. At least far easier than identifying the various key changes. But actually that's not always the case. For one, the rules about masculine first theme and feminine second theme turn out to be quite flimsy. Any number of themes can interact in any number of ways. And these themes are often just tiny motifs (dun dun dun dun), rather than a tune you'd whistle walking down the street.

When I first listen to a new symphony—especially a longer, more complex one—sometimes I even find myself doubting if it's in sonata form, because I can't even figure out whether the development and recapitulation start. Often, the composer even adds an introduction before the exposition, and so you don't even know if you're hearing the main theme or not! This is the kind of thing that leads even seasoned musicians to read program notes before hearing a new piece of music.

But luckily, the heart of the sonata is not melodic, but harmonic. And even though it sounds like following key changes would be way harder than following themes, it requires a lot less work. Because while following themes can require a lot of effort, following harmonies is built in to the way the world works, and in general is more intuitive than learned.

Physics??

How is that possible? Somewhat magically, physics! The harmonic key relationships that make sonata form work are universal truths about the way sound works. We touched on Harmony and Timbre before, but this is the next level of understanding it. Bear with me for a moment.

Sound is, of course, vibration. Imagine that 100 vibrations per second give us a pitch that sounds like a “C.” (It's actually 132, but the round number is worth it.)

When you activate a string on, say, a piano or a violin it sends a bunch of waves back and forth down the string. ^💬 The waves that are exactly the right speed to bounce back and forth along the string (100hz) will keep the string resonating and keep going until it's out of energy, stacking up like someone pushing a swing at just the right time. That's how we hear the fundamental pitch—the C at 100hz. The waves that are too fast or too slow (like 120hz or 80hz) won't bounce back at the right place, instead bouncing right into the oncoming wave and dying off.

But there are also other frequencies that will resonate as well. At double the speed, 200hz, the sound wave will still hit the beginning and the end of the string at the right point in the wave. And at triple the speed, 300hz. And quadruple the speed, 400hz. And 500hz. And 600hz. And 700hz. Every multiple of the fundamental. Which of these we hear, and how loud they are depends on the instrument. This is why a C on the piano sounds different from a C on the trumpet—or just from a different piano (the phenomenon called timbre): we are hearing different overtones—the extra tones on top of the fundamental.

OK, so what does this have to do with key relationships and sonata form? Well, 200hz and 300hz also happen to be notes, of course! 200hz is another C, but the 300hz is 5 piano keys above it, an interval of a fifth—a G. This first “new” note is called the Dominant, and it is inextricably tied to the original note. Whenever you play a C, you will also be playing a G—quieter, but omnipresent. Thus the key of G will always sound like it belongs in the key of C.

A key like F# does not, however, belong in the key of C. It is not one of the strong, audible overtones—in fact it's about as far as you can get. It does not resonate nicely with a C. And so an F# will sound very distant from C.

And so, we get the basic fact of sonata form. If we play a bunch of melodies in C, the listener has that in the ear as the main key, the tonic. From there we can easily get to a nearby key, like G for another theme. This second theme is the first step away from home, but it's still in our comfort zone. But once we start adventuring past that, we are not just “far away” because the composer said so, we are far away by the physical, universal laws of sound. So the final return, when we play both themes in the tonic once again, feels not just right, but often inevitable.

Here's the effect in Mozart's G minor symphony. First, the exposition that grounds us in the tonic key before moving to the closely related dominant.

Then here's a passage from the end of the exposition where it feels like we're settled in the second theme's related key of B-flat… until the development begins and decides to bring us to foreign lands and keys. You'll notice that the main theme is more or less unchanged as it's repeated in different keys—but it feels different because we've strayed so far from home.

But how will we get home from there? Mozart searches to find his way back for a minute or so, and when we finally arrive back at the beginning, it feels familiar. This sense of searching and arriving—the tension and pull of the home key—is the most basic form of musical narrative. Even though the opening had an ominous G-minor tone, there's something comforting about hearing it again in its original form.

For a deep dive on this concept and this symphony in particular, I highly recommend Leonard Bernstein's lecture-performance.

Of course, very few musicians, let alone audience members, are thinking about the physics of different overtones in the middle of a symphony. I present this to you primarily to say that you don't need to do anything to follow a sonata. Because whether we are conscious of it or not, we can all tell when we're close to or far from home.

Pushing the Boundaries

The two symphonies we've seen so far—Beethoven 5 and Mozart 40—are cornerstones of the repertoire that fit the form very nicely. But there are three ways that we can push the boundaries a bit more: using more difficult material, writing longer pieces, and disrupting the form altogether.

Copland says, “There is, however, one minimum requirement for the potentially intelligent listener. He must be able to recognize a melody when he hears it.”

More difficult material means that it's harder to extract and remember the melody. Especially as music gets more modern, melodies can get less and less singable.

So how does one recognize and remember a melody?

At the beginning of the piece, when it's easiest to pay attention, just find some way to relate to the first theme. It could be the way it makes you feel, it could be the name of an emotion. It could be a single word like “pleasant” or “passionate”. Or you could think of it as introducing a character, like in a Mozart opera. That way when it changes, you can recognize it.

I want to give some live reactions to how I might listen to a brand new piece that I don't know, and has material that's less traditional than Mozart and Beethoven. Here is the first movement of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's String Quartet. ChatGPT expects it to be in sonata form, but it's been wrong before, so I don't actually know what will happen. My reactions are in the live notes.

My takeaways: honestly I'm pretty thrilled that this piece worked out so well. I'd have to study the score to be sure, but it sure feels like sonata form. Each part of the structure feels nicely contained and easy to hear as a specific section.

The first things I noticed: super catchy main theme, and the beautiful second theme feels somehow both delicate and passionate. The story-telling from this quartet is top-notch. I know their reputation and resume, and they live up to it. The pauses right before the recap were so full of longing, and the arrival back home was exactly the feeling I get when I come home after a long trip. This is exactly the type of story that sonata form excels at.

Now let's check some program notes, just for fun. They all start with the same quote from the composer, “When I sat down to write this string quartet, I was not trying to write something Black, I was just writing out of my experience.” It's named for a spiritual, “Calvary.” I wonder if I knew the spiritual, if I would recognize the melodies.

This does feel like the type of piece that could be autobiographical, with its references to journeys and feeling at home. But I don't know that it would be, because I don't know his life. If I were to listen to it again, I would probably listen less for the structure and more surrender myself to the various energies from each section.

Length 😱

The length of the Big pieces is one of the scariest things for new concertgoers. And for good reason—it legitimately makes it harder for anyone to follow. The first time I heard Bruckner's 9th Symphony with its 25-minute first movement, I had absolutely no clue where in the sonata form we were (or was it even in sonata form? I just assumed).

The next month, I left a concert just before they started Schubert's “Great” Symphony because I could just feel that I wasn't in the right mindset to engage with that much music.

But grandiose scale (or as Robert Schumann called it, “Heavenly Length”) also leads to some of Classical Music's greatest rewards. The opening movement of Mahler 2, for instance, also clocks in around 25 minutes long but the length is a key feature to make us forget our worldly cares. We'll discuss this more in the final chapter on music for the spirit.

A piece can be made to feel shorter, though, by chunking it into bigger units.

If a performer (or a listener) keeps smelling all the roses, the journey will feel quite a bit longer than if they zoom out and see the whole forest (not to mix metaphors).

Zander explains in his TED talk:

This is what we call “the long line.” Copland writes, “That long line must give a sense of direction, and we must be made to feel that the direction is the inevitable one.”

And so if we can think of an entire phrase—or sometimes even an entire piece “in a single breath” the length begins to feel much more manageable. This is a duty shared by composer, performer, and audience alike. Otherwise, as Yo-Yo Ma says, you may just leave thinking that Haydn is a bad composer.

Copland puts it:

A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave taking to a long foreseen destination. Music must always flow, for that is part of its very essence, but the creation of that continuity and flow—that long line—constitutes the be-all and end-all of every composer’s existence.

A breakdown of form

Beethoven started to breakdown the sonata form practically as soon as he started writing sonatas. He wrote 32 piano sonatas, consistently writing in the form throughout his life. At each step, he radically changed the form, from adding a then-non-traditional fourth movement in Op. 2 to his last work, Op. 111, which uses only two movements and puts the emphasis on the 18-minute long theme-and-variations second movement.

In between, he did everything imaginable to mess with the form. By the time he hit Op. 27 around the age of 30, the form barely resembled the “sonata” that we started the chapter with. He called the two Op. 27 sonatas “Quasi una fantasia,” like a fantasy. Today, Op. 27 No. 2 is known as the Moonlight Sonata (named after his death).

The thing is, most of these innovations no longer startle us when we hear them in the concert hall like they did the audiences of his time. When you get to the concert hall to see the Moonlight sonata, you've either heard it before or you haven't. If you've heard it before, you're not going to be surprised that it starts slow and dreamy rather than fast like a typical sonata. If you've never heard it before, you honestly probably haven't internalized sonata form so thoroughly that you're surprised when it starts slow. Maybe you've gone to a pre-concert lecture where you're told how surprised you should be… but in my experience this doesn't exactly make people gasp in shock when it starts.

So what are we to do when the point of the surprise no longer lands? Every program note about his fourth concerto tells us how shocked we should be when the piano begins the exposition instead of the orchestra. I've never seen a single surprised face in a concert hall in my life! And yet it remains one of his most played pieces. ^💬

I think the disintegration of the traditional sonata form tells us two things. First, the effect of the music, not its architecture is the most important thing. Second, it gives us some more permission to experience the narrative unfolding in a less rigorous way of listening.

Before Beethoven, the fantasy was largely an improvisational genre, occasionally paired with a stricter form, like a Fantasy and Fugue for Bach or the C Minor Fantasy with the C Minor Sonata for Mozart. When Beethoven blurred the line between Sonata and Fantasy, he opened the door for many of the greatest works of the piano repertoire that could never have flourished within the earlier structures. The fantasies of Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Scriabin, and others that are not quite sonatas put more and more emphasis on the content itself, giving the composer free rein to tell their story however they like.

Scriabin, for example, wrote Sonatas, a Sonata-Fantasy, and a Fantasy. What gives? To this listener, honestly very little. Although the sonatas might be more rigorous in some sense, in all his works the listener feels the boundaries between sections disappearing in favor of a more freeform journey.

They can all be listened to, in some sense, the same way we might listen to a sonata. They all have a beginning, middle, and end, and they all have a narrative sense of leaving home and coming back. We can just sit back and enjoy the ride.

In the performance selector are some favorite moments of fantasy.

Music is an art that lives in time, not in space. This most basic fact of music is where sonata form thrives. It shows a journey through time, and this gives it a chance to express change through time.

Even when it feels more stream-of-consciousness, the fantasy is a narrative form. But in a sonata, the first movement (the Sonata-Allegro) is usually only the first act. There are three movements yet to come—a slow movement, a lighter movement, and a finale. The fantasy has these elements too, but often woven together into a single movement without breaks.

In the next chapter, we'll look at the next element: the slow movement, the gem that moves listeners to cry and others to fall asleep.