The movements in sonata form: Opp. 20/ii, 21/i, 22/i, 24/i and 27/i

TL;DRAbstract

Sonata occupies a position of particular pre–eminence in Western music as an acknowledged vehicle for the expression of lofty ideas. In Fundamentals of Musical Composition Schoenberg cites as the greatest merit of sonata form, ‘which enabled it to hold a commanding position over a period of 150 years’, its ‘extraordinary flexibility in accommodating the widest variety of musical ideas, long or short, many or few, active or passive, in almost any combination’. As regarded by the nineteenth century, the sonata is the most inherently dramatic of the homophonic forms: reduced to its essentials, the romantic sonata represents an unfolding series of events and relationships between two protagonists of contrasting keys and character. To a considerable extent these events and relationships are stylized. Typically the first theme or group is dramatic and the second lyrical; the first is always in the tonic key (or at least begins and ends there) and the second never is; the themes are stated in

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