Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-24hb2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T12:55:58.088Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Formal dynamic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

W. Dean Sutcliffe
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

BINARY-FORM BLUES

It is doubtful if the Scarlatti literature has been so consistently unilluminating as on the matter of form. Many writers have been mesmerized by the consistent use of balanced binary form in most of the sonatas, which has in various ways been seen as a problematic feature. (In balanced binary the material that closes each half matches and so creates a structural rhyme.) The musicological malaise about mid-eighteenth-century music has rarely been so apparent as in many of these discussions; they are underpinned by the sense of the composer as a transitional figure, with his use of binary form resting comfortably neither with the Baroque conception nor with the Classical sonata style that acts as the promised land. Indeed, a number of writers have explicitly characterized this issue as ‘the problem of form’, so conflating our problems of historical comprehension with a composer's-eye view of the formal means at his disposal.

A related perception concerns the ‘limitations’ of the binary form within which the composer is held to work. Thus the sonatas are ‘circumscribed formally’ and create a ‘mechanical impression’; the composer himself is ‘unadventurous in formal structures’, with even Pasquini and Alessandro Scarlatti showing ‘far greater variety of musical form’. This binary shaping has been seen as problematic or limited mainly because of the influence of one of the master narratives of eighteenth-century music historiography, the inexorable development towards sonata form.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Formal dynamic
  • W. Dean Sutcliffe, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-Century Musical Style
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481857.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Formal dynamic
  • W. Dean Sutcliffe, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-Century Musical Style
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481857.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Formal dynamic
  • W. Dean Sutcliffe, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-Century Musical Style
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481857.008
Available formats
×