Ioannis
Fulias, “Sonata
forms and their theoretical evolution: The
fifth sonata type (“sonata-concerto form”) in 18th- and 19th-century theory”,
Polyphonia 18, Athens
2011, p. 86-124.
The eleventh part of
this extensive survey of the theoretical evolution of sonata forms from 18th to
20th centuries begins
to treat the fifth sonata type, i.e. the enriched version of any pure sonata
form with orchestral ritornellos in the classic concertos. Taking a brief
account on the compositional evolution from the late baroque “ritornello form”
to early classical “concerto form” as a starting point, the present paper
observes this substantial structural transformation being also reflected in
music-theoretical writings from mid-18th-century (mainly by Johann Joachim
Quantz and Joseph Riepel), in which only vague references to sonata techniques
can still be detected in the “concerto form”, to late-18th-century (by Georg
Joseph Vogler, Heinrich Christoph Koch and Francesco Galeazzi), where the binary or ternary sonata type is now
clearly considered as the basis of the “concerto form”, whilst the role of
the ritornellos is drastically pushed out of the limelight. Moreover, just
before the end of the 18th-century, August Kollmann already makes the next
crucial step towards the full integration and assimilation of all orchestral
sections of a concerto into a simple ternary sonata form, which is then further
developed during the entire 19th-century by Carl Czerny, Adolf
Bernhard Marx, Otto Jahn and Ebenezer Prout, among others.
© Ioannis
Fulias