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WILLIAM E.

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JAMES

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HEPOKOSKI WEBSTER

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Three Methodological Reflections .........................• -

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EDITED BY PIETER BERGE

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LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

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CONTENTS

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~ PREFACE

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Ludwig Holtmeier

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PROLOGUE

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CONSIDERING MUSICAL FORM, FORMS AND FORM EN LEH RE

Pieter Berge

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PART I. WILLIAM E. CAPLIN & THE THEORY FORMAL FUNCTIONS

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WHAT ARE FORMAL FUNCTIONS'

William E. Caplin

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James Hepokoski

© 2010 Leuven University Press/ Universitaire Pers Leuven / Presses Universitaires de Louvain, Mindetbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated datafile or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers. ISBN 978 90 5867 822 S

DI 2010/ 1869/ 28 NUR: 663 Cover & book design: Jurgen Leemans

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Comments on William E. Caplin's Essay "What Are Formal Functions?"

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James Webster

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Response to the Comments

William E. Caplin PART II. }AMES HEPOKOSKI & THE CONCEPT DIALOG IC FORM

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SONATA THEORY AND DIALOG IC FORM

James Hepokoski

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Comments on William E. Caplin's Essay "What Are Formal Functions?"

First edition (hardcover) published 2009 Second edition (revised paperback) published 2010

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Comments on James Hepokoski's Essay "Sonata Theory and Dialogic Form"

William E. Caplin

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PREFACE

Comments on James Hepokoski's Essay "Sonata Theory and Dialogic Form"

Ludwig Holtmeier

James Webster

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Response to the Comments

James Hepokoski

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PART Ill. JAMES WEBSTER & THE CONCEPT MULTIVALENT ANALYSIS

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FORMENLEHRE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

James Webster Comments on James Webster's Essay "Formenlehre in Theory and Practice"

William E. Caplin Comments on James Webster's Essay "Formenlehre in Theory and Practice"

James Hepokoski Response to the Comments

James Webster EPILOGUE THE FUTURE OF FORMENLEHRE

Pieter Berge BIBLIOGRAPHY

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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he present volume arose from a symposium on Formenlehre that took place at the 6th European Music Analysis Conference (EuroMAC) in Freiburg, , October 10-14, 2007., The conferencewith 'interpretation' serving as its overriding theme-was organized by the Deutsche Gesellschaft fiir Musiktheorie (this also being its seventh annual meeting), the Gesellschaft fur Musik und Asthetik, the Hochschule fiir Musik Freiburg, and the Freiburger Albert-LudwigsUniversitat (the conference occupying a central position within the 55o'h anniversary celebrations of that university). The conference was also ed by the Societe francaise d'analyse musicale, the Gruppo analisi e teoria musicale, the Societe beige d'analyse musicale, the Society for Music Analysis, and the Vereniging voor Muziektheorie (DutchFlemish Society for Music Theory). With 180 speakers and well over 500 participants, the 6'h EuroMAC was, one must presume, the most comprehensive European conference on music theory ever. The considerable success of the conference, which even surprised the organizers, seems ·to have been based on two main factors. In the first place, the content of the thematic sessions chosen tly by the European societies ('Analysis and performance practice,' 'Text and music,' 'The interpretation of new music,' 'The notion of improvisation in the 18th century,' and 'Formenlehre') seemed generally to have struck a chord. Moreover, most of the sessions that met with strong approval at the conference bore witness to some more or less clearly expressed national 'tendencies.' In , the so-called historische Satzlehre (historically informed music theory) currently stands at the center of the music-theoretical mainstream, while that topic seems only recently to have gained ground in North American circles. By contrast, the Schenkerian sessions were dominated by North American theorists, yet were also complimented by some European specialists, a group that has been rapidly developing in the last number of years. In the second place, the

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theme of 'Formenlehre' stood at the heart of the conference in a manner that seemed to transcend the ever perceptible departmentalization of national customs and discourses within European music theory as well as the rift between North American and European research and pedagogical traditions. Music-theoretical discourse on Formenlehre is a truly international one: it is currently perhaps the only discourse, within the context of a 'global' music theory, that rests on a broad foundation, anchored by various national traditions. Our conscious effort to build bridges with North American music theory was met by some critical concerns in the run-up to the conference. A few of my European colleagues required an explanation for our having invited one Canadian and two American scholars to discuss one of the most 'German' of all theory topics at a plenary session right in the heart of this large European conference. Was it possible that something was being sold as 'new' that was already standard practice throughout Europe and, especially, ? Mild resentments arose every now and then, but also a rarely itted feeling of inferiority in the face of a music-theoretical tradition whose superior productivity since the end of the Second World War is widely perceived and

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I expressly thank William E. Caplin, James Hepokoski and James Webster, but also especially Pieter Berge for his conceiving and organizing the Frei burg Formenlehre session and for his efforts in bringing it to publication.

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Ludwig Holtmeier - Freiburg irn Breisgau, October

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recognized, but whose specific form and content remain even today somewhat foreign to many European music theorists. Nevertheless, the meeting of cultures at the Freiburg conference was an extraordinary success, because the Formenlehre topic could be discussed on equal footing, face-to-face. More simply put: beyond all the secret codes and closed systems, a language was spoken here that was familiar to nearly 111 the participants. In the course of this amicable and open meeting in Freiburg, even isolated, critical reservations gave way to insights. Thus, the three scholars whose differing ideas are documented in this volume stood at the center of the Freiburg conference not as representatives of North American music theory, but as those who, in recent years, have considerably determined the international discourse on Formenlehre. A European conference on music theory is first of all a music theory conference, and only thereafter European.

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efining the concept ofmusical form' is a precarious enterprise. Many musicologists and theorists have undertaken it and have inevitably confronted the question, what is musical form? In most cases, however, this central question does not persist for long. Often, it is evaded almost immediately and rephrased as a question (or group of questions) that tries to circumscribe how musical form is generated, how

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it is constituted, how it functions, and so forth. In the essays presented in this volume, a similar shift can be observed more than once. William E. Caplin, for instance, launches his essay "What Are Formal Functions?" with the question, "what is form?" [>21). 1 Quickly thereafter, however, he undertakes the exercise oflisting " and expressions associated with discourse about form in music" [>21, my italics]. The list is impressively long and contains a series of that open up fascinating per-

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spectives on how to approach form [>see Caplin's Figure I.I, 22). Soon enough, however, Caplin its that he will deliberately avoid providing anything like a "dictionary definition" of form in music, stating that a "more dfective ( ... ) approach" might be to "consider( ... ) the sorts of things we typically do when analyzing form in connection with a specific work" [>23, my italics]. In other words, the general question about the very identity of musical form is rapidly abandoned in favor of a potentially infinite list of more practical and concrete investigations. James Hepokoski also poses the question, "what is 'form' itself?" at the onset of his essay "Sonata Theory and Dialogic Form," and thereby firmly states that it is "[T]he most basic question at stake when we deal with our own concretizations of musical structure or when we seek to build systems offormal classifications" [>71). In addressing this key question, however, Hepokoski almost immediately proceeds to "single out twoofits basis principles" [>71). First, he notes that the perception ofform is essentially "a collaborative enterprise" [>71), and secondly he suggests that "the full range of an implicit musical form" only reveals itself in "a dialogical process" between the specific composition itself and its broad-

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William E. Caplin's essay is primarily conceived as a theoretical reflection on his basic concept of 'formal function.' Starting from what he himself considers to be a lacuna in his well-known treatise Classical Form from 1998,3 Caplin sets out to elucidate this concept and to adduce arguments for why his 'theory of form' is essentially a theory of'formalfunctions' rather than of'formal types,' or of'form' in general. By focusing on the theoretical and methodological basis of his analytical system, Caplin offers an appendix to his theory, albeit one that from now on should rather be considered its proper preambulum. As such, it surely will clear up some of the misunderstandings his theory has provoked in the past decade and make more conscious its essentially rigorous and

thus precedes the further characterization of its identity. James Webster, in his essay "Formenlehre in Theory and Practice," approaches the case in a somewhat different, but still comparable, way. Webster 'skips over.' the definitional question and jumps right into its multifarious characterizations. He starts "by briefly discussing two important general issues affecting musical form"[> 123, my italics]. In his approach, a concept of form is, so to speak, presupposed-which does not imply that a clear definition of'form' is at hand as an a priori certainty, of course. Rather, the negation of the question seems to suggest its relative irrelevance for the real scope of Webster's interest: the practice

highly systematic way of approaching classical form. James Hepokoski's essay focuses on the concept of'dialogic form.' This idea had already been introduced in his earlier writings, both in discussing specific formal phenomena4 and in the general presentation of his and Warren Darcy's Sonata Theory.' In the reception of Sonata The-

of musical analysis. In these contexts, to 'digress from' or to 'skip over' the question "what is musical form?" should by no means be considered as a failure. Apart from strongly indicating the complexity of the phenomenon itself,

ory, however, most discussions have concentrated on the entire network of compositional options laid out by its authors, especially focusing on some of its most challenging concepts (such as 'medial caesura' and 'essential expositional closure'). As a result, the fundamental role 'dia-

this definitional omission represents a general intention to grasp musical form within a theory or method that reveals only aspects of form; these aspects are then considered to be crucial for itsidentity, as well as relevant

in this volume depend, irrespective of whether they should be regarded as 'theories' or 'methods,' on the inner coherence of their methodologies. To define these methodologies, rather than to define what musical form is, remains the true ambition of this volume. To its contributors, it offers a unique opportunity to articulate the essentials of their appro~ches to musical form, to clarify their unique (but, of course, not unrelated) position in the realm of so-called Formenlehre, and to confront their interpretations with the differing opinions of their colleagues.

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different manner-Hepokoski's implicit understanding of what form is

for the concrete praxis of musical analysis. Inevitably, however, such an approach implies the necessity of defining a well-circumscribed theoretical perspective that both explains and justifies the constraints implied in the proposed model. Therefore, the three analytical viewpoints presented

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er generic context [>71]. However crucial these principles may be-and they are indeedl=-the question "what is musical form?" is in some way deflected to an exposition of some ofits essential characteristics. Although the meaning of a concept fundamentally relies, of course, on the definition of these qualities, it is evident that the essence of the defined concept itself does not coincide with them. Like Caplin's approach-though in a

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logic form' plays in_ their theory has largely been underrated, if not fully neglected. 'Dialogic form' is not, however, just another 'characteristic' ofform. On the contrary, "the deeper sense of form," as Hepokoski puts it [>72], is implied in the dialogical status of form itself. His essay in this volume should therefore be considered a vigorous attempt to reconfirm the essentially contextual basis of Sonata Theory, and, by extension, of all theories of form that operate within a normative framework. James Webster's position again differs somewhat from that of his colleagues. The most obvious contrast, of course, is that Webster has never published a 'theory' of musical form and-more importantly-has never aspired to develop one. He repudiates the constraints that, according to him, are inevitably implied in the construction of such a theory.

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From his point of view, theories of form tend to include hierarchical structures that privilege some parameters over others. To overcome

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