Tinkering with Form: On W. F. Bach's Revisions to Two Keyboard Sonatas

This article examines the way Wilhelm Friedemann Bach's revisions to two keyboard sonatas (Fk 1 and Fk 6) reflect his engagement with the emerging sonata-form aesthetic. I show how the revisions update his older, essentially binary practice by introducing Classical sentence structure in the first themes; a differentiated theme in the dominant before the end of the first half; distinct development and recapitulation sections; and an enhanced tonic-dominant polarity, as well as other features that were to become characteristic of sonata form. Bach's conscious tinkering with his older works thus reflects a contemporary response to the way common practice was tinkering with binary form, gradually transforming it to what eventually became known as Classical sonata form.

Expecting the end: Continuous expectancy ratings for tonal cadences

Cognitive accounts for the formation of expectations during music listening have largely centered around mental representations of scales using both melodic and harmonic stimuli. This study extends these findings to the most recurrent cadence patterns associated with tonal music using a real-time, continuous-rating paradigm. Musicians and nonmusicians heard cadential excerpts selected from Mozart’s keyboard sonatas (perfect authentic cadence [PAC], imperfect authentic cadence [IAC], half cadence [HC], deceptive cadence [DC], and evaded cadence [EV]), and continuously rated the strength of their expectations that the end of each excerpt is imminent. As predicted, expectations for closure increased over the course of each excerpt and then peaked at or near the target melodic tone and chord. Cadence categories for which tonic harmony was the expected goal (PAC, IAC, DC, EV) received the highest and earliest expectancy ratings, whereas cadence categories ending with dominant harmony (HC) received the lowest and latest ratings, suggesting that dominant harmony elicits weaker expectations in anticipation of its occurrence in cadential contexts. A regression analysis also revealed that longer excerpts featuring dense textures and a cadential six-four harmony received the highest ratings overall.

Composing Authority in Six Forged “Haydn” Sonatas

In December 1993 news broke that six keyboard sonatas whose rediscovery was being hailed as “The Haydn Scoop of the Century” were, in fact, not by Haydn at all. It soon emerged that the compositions—initially believed to be the lost Hob. XVI:2a–e and 2g—were not simple misattributions, but rather something that has rarely been discussed in the music world: modern forgeries deliberately constructed to deceive scholars and listeners. Adapting philosophical and art-historical writing on forgery to music, this article examines the six “Haydn” sonatas in the context of contemporary debates about expertise, postmodernism, and the author concept. Analyzing the stylistic content of the works in question sheds new light on musical forgeries as artifacts of aesthetic prejudice and anti-academic critique. More broadly, it suggests that the long-overlooked phenomenon of forgery poses questions about authorship, authority, and truth itself that have an important place in our shared history as musicologists. Should our standards of evidence be rooted in historical sources, musical style, or some combination of the two? What kind of relationship do we believe exists between composers and their works? And is there any inherent reason—cultural, ethical, or otherwise—that we cannot write music like Haydn’s today? In posing such questions, the story of the forged Haydn sonatas provides us with a unique opportunity to reflect on the values and future of the field.

Recognizing Musical Topics Versus Executing Rhetorical Figures

Along with the emergence of topic theory, musicological discourse has witnessed a spectacular revival of rhetorical terminology. How can musical topics be defined vis-à-vis rhetorical figures? Any answer is fraught with paradox. Unlike Scheibe’s or Mattheson’sloci topici(which remained conceptually clearly anchored ininventio), Ratnerian topics span the range ofresandverba(ideas and words) orinventioandelocutio: like figures, topics are to be recognized as striking foreground events and definitions of them have been style-specific. This chapter discusses three existing examples of figure- versus topic-oriented analysis of solo keyboard sonatas, exploring the compatibility of topic and figure while enlarging the picture to include performance,voluntas(or intent of the speaker), and choice of instrument. The three analyses are Friedrich August Kanne’s (1821) of Mozart’s K. 309/i, Wye Allanbrook’s (1992) of Mozart’s K. 332/i, and Leonard Ratner’s (1980) of Haydn’s Hob. XVI:52/i.

Performer rights and responsibilities in historical performance

In April 2014, fortepianist and Mozart specialist John Irving recorded a CD of solo keyboard sonatas by Joseph Haydn, using a modern copy of a Viennese fortepiano of Haydn?s era. This is an account of the project written from the performer?s perspective, examining some relevant issues of historical performance practice, organology, and detailed reflections upon the performer?s preparations (of various musical and technical kinds) for the recording.