Criteria for a Theory of Nineteenth-Century Sonata Form

Thanks to the work of Janet Schmalfeldt, James Hepokoski, Steven Vande Moortele, and others, progress toward a theory of form for nineteenth-century instrumental music has accelerated in recent years. This article addresses some of the theoretical and methodological issues to which this project gives rise. Taking medial-caesura usage in the chamber and solo sonata forms of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms as a representative corpus study, it focuses on questions of what constitutes a norm in Formenlehre, how we determine the criteria for establishing a practice as normative, and how these criteria relate to concepts of normativity in the human sciences. Finally, it offers a comparative analysis of how these issues affect sonata-formal strategies in the first movements of Brahms's First Symphony and Bruckner's Eighth Symphony.