Conference Agenda

This paper offers a renewed understanding of two-dimensional sonata form (a multi-movement cycle that simultaneously acts as a single, large sonata form, Vande Moortele 2009) through a study of linking passages that connect movements, usually performed attacca. First, I introduce the inter-movement link as a distinct formal function, not yet formulated by recent Formenlehren. It must occupy at least one phrase, contain harmonic motion and usually its own cadence (possibly elided), and smoothly connect the two movements harmonically. I then discuss seven examples from the 19^th century, mostly concerti, that present a conceptual progression of increasing interdependence of individual movements: from essentially independent, but linked, movements, each having a unified key, a final cadence, and a conventional formal type, to movements that violate these norms by fusing into an inseparable two-dimensional form.

To detail this progression, I study the linking function from a Caplinian form-functional perspective in relation to five formal aspects: (1) the link’s hierarchical level (phrase, theme, or movement), (2) the surrounding small-scale framing functions (introduction and post-cadential), (3) the functional ending and beginning of the two linked movements, especially via cadences, (4) the individual movements’ keys, and (5) the process of “becoming” (Schmalfeldt 2011). The examples include Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (movement 3–4), Felix Mendelssohn’s(Violin Concerto in E Minor, movement 1–2), Chaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in A Major (movements 2–3), Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor (movement 2–3), Anton Arensky Violin Concerto in A Minor (movements 2–3), Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor (movement 1–2), and Liszt’s First Piano Concerto in Eb Major (movement 2). The last three works are fully two-dimensional, since their first movements modulate (and, in the Liszt, so does the slow movements), and their finales bring back themes from earlier movements. The linking function helps create the indivisible two-dimensional form.

Icelandic composer-singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir's 2017 album Utopia has been considered one of her most challenging creations due to its juxtaposition of musical elements with bird vocalizations layered and mixed equally with her distinctive vocal performance. The listener is presented with a novel aesthetic requiring multiple listening strategies. This essay begins by considering current Anglophone music theory and its limitations in analyzing bird vocalization as a marked musical component heard in the novelty layer, extending Megan Lavengood's textural concept to include natural sounds. While this approach illuminates a way of listening to bird samples as a musical feature, markedness and novelty fail to capture Utopia's expressivity adequately. Pierre Schaeffer's acousmatic aesthetics and reduced listening supplement existing canonical tools, hearing the sounds in the track detached from their sources, contributing to a sonic tapestry that is at times neither musical nor indexical.

From a listener's perspective, to what extent might we simultaneously hear musicality, indexicality, and acousmatic reductions? This paper will attempt to build an analytic model using Denis Smalley's space form concept that prioritizes space over time, mapping out an aural scene that suggests a visual interpretation. Aural attention is directed according to stream segregation using the tools of auditory scene analysis (ASA). In this sense, Utopia is an aural cartography built from spatially located sonic objects rather than a purely musical texture. The resulting listening strategy is a kind of acoustemology or "a sonic way of knowing and being in the world," according to Steven Feld. Björk uses samples of bird vocalizations and non-human sounds to deterritorialize her songs in the Deleuzian sense, projecting a cosmic sense of nature and a flat ontology.

My analysis in this paper will focus on the album's title track, but similar spatial models apply to other Utopia destinations. The temporal experience of listening to the album is movement through distinct spaces built from a complex sonic network. This research is intended to explore potential conversations between music theory, sound studies, and perception and cognition studies, developing hybrid models that will lead to greater analytic insight and an enhanced listening experience.

That first themes in sonata form expositions articulate the main tonality of the movement is considered axiomatic. As Hepokoski and Darcy state, “P-themes are rarely, if ever, tonally ambiguous,” and “the vigorous postulating of a diatonic collection within P leaves no doubt regarding the local tonic being asserted” (2006, 73). In contrast to the generally “tight-knit” organization of the P-zone, subordinate themes often exhibit looser formal and tonal organization (Caplin, 2013, 286, 397–8). Studies on nineteenth-century sonata form have primarily focused on formal loosening within the S-zone; less attention has been given to unconventional tonal procedures in the P-zone.

Several precedents of P-zone formal loosening have been observed, including Schubert's B-flat Major Piano Sonata, D. 960 (Beach, 2017; Rusch, 2023), and Mendelssohn's String Quartet, Op. 44, No. 1 (Taylor, 2024). This paper proposes a systematic theory for discussing tonally expanded P-zones in early Romantic sonatas, focusing on what I label the "Interrupted Home Key Exposition" (IHK). Unlike non-monotonal first themes that move linearly from one tonal center to another, IHK situations introduce an additional thematic action space in a new (usually remote) tonality but ultimately revert to the HK to launch the TR.

This circular progression belongs to a broader phenomenon I term "Retracted Tonal Areas" (RTAs), characterized by an initiating structural articulation (Cadential Boundary), a tonally stable thematic action space, and a redirecting module (P/S RT) ending with another articulated divider. Unlike S-zone RTAs, where the destabilizing effect is counterbalanced by another S theme or C-section in the reclaimed destination key, in P-zone RTAs the reestablished HK is once more abandoned, either within the TR or at the onset of the S, creating complex interactions between form functions and tonal trajectories. In some cases, the functional ambiguity results in competing readings: either the foreign tonality constitutes an RTA in P, or the HK's recurrence is "out of place" in S. The paper examines this through case studies in various genres (piano sonata, string quartet, and symphony) by Dussek, Schubert, and Lachner.