A Tri-partite Dialogic Form: On Temporality, Listening, and History in the New Formenlehre

Abstract

Despite being a foundational principle for James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s Sonata Theory, the concept of ‘dialogic form’ requires further exploration. This principle sees form as emerging from a dialogue between a work and historical expectations, as one considers how the former conforms to or ‘deforms’ the latter. However, questions remain about how this dialogic process is experienced by a listener throughout a work. This temporal experience of form has been interrogated by Janet Schmalfeldt, who combines dialogic form with William Caplin’s form-functional approach. Additionally, dialogic form’s emphasis on expectations and their interpretative implications intersects with Sonata Theory’s historicist and hermeneutic concerns, which have received significant criticism from Julian Horton. Evidently, dialogic form’s confluence of listening, temporality, and history merits closer attention.

This thesis develops a tri-partite account of dialogic form to nuance our understanding of the New Formenlehre. Firstly, I establish how the concept involves a dialogic disposition as external context and expectations inform one’s analysis of a work. This disposition is substantiated in relation to Horton’s empirical approach to Formenlehre and Schmalfeldt’s philosophy of listening. Secondly, by discussing Schmalfeldt’s concept of Becoming and its subsequent reception, I explore how expectations influence the listening process in both Sonata Theory and form-functional approaches. Thirdly, I assess how the result or ‘dialogic outcome’ of this process is interpreted as expectations are fulfilled or subverted. To this end, I reconceptualise Sonata Theory’s ideas of ‘sonata failure’ and ‘deformation’ by explicating their associated narratives and judgements. Thus, expounding dialogic form as a multi-faceted phenomenon—as an analytical disposition for a listening process with dialogic outcomes—enables a more sophisticated account of sonata form and how we analyse it.