The following exchange is taken from an email discussion that Ron Herrema had with Mark Sullivan. Ron was responding to some remarks that Mark had made in a class, MUS 881, Composition Seminar. The class had been examining form in 20th century music, drawing on ideas formulated by T. W. Adorno, particulary those found in "Mahler, A Musical Physiognomy" and "Quasi Una Fantasia"
Ron: If I accept that twentieth century pieces of music--such as Ravel's Bolero--tend to have unique forms, whereas late 18th century pieces of music tended to make use of shared forms (such as sonata-allegro form), then it seems that form has been elevated in status in the twentieth century, for it now lies within the realm of a piece's uniqueness--unless, of course, the uniqueness of all Mozart's sonata-allegro forms lies in the unique way in which they interact with the shared form.
Mark: I'm not sure the status is elevated. Different yes. Superior, not really. But I do think your observation, in many cases, is correct. Form has become one aspect of the uniqueness of compositions. This is both a curse and a distinction. It makes the piece harder to comprehend and interferes with the forms attempt to impart coherence to the events within its form, and it allows the form to have a distinct, and yes, unique relation to the events in it.
I also think that one of the distinctions of the way Mozart, and other composers, dealt with the historically developing concept of sonata form has to do, not only with the way they interacted with the notions of how that form should be constructed, but also how the unique ways they approached it changed it and drove the development of the form itself.
I don't think these questions of form can be relegated to architectonic schemes though. That is a different matter.
Ron: What I would like to propose (hypothesize) is that the conventions known as "sonata-allegro" form do not lie at the heart of what is structurally significant in the music of Hayden, Mozart etc. Of all the structural relationships that exist in one of these pieces, why should those described as "sonata-allegro form" be elevated to the status of THE form?
Mark: What would you put in its place? On the level of form (I assume your willing to accept Adorno's cryptic distinction between form and structure) I don't know what would be put in its place. To be sure, form is not the only thing that can be at the heart of what is structurally significant in any music, if structure refers to what is going on underneath surface schemata and the events that are happening (i.e. processes, distributed relationships, and so forth). The kind of themes, the character of the themes, rhythmic propulsions, surprise, drive, unpredictability, timbral formations, how events are connected, or broken, all these things might also be near the heart of what is structurally significant. But, though they may be the carriers of form, though they be the concrete instances in succession through which form is articulated, they are not the form.
Ron: My skepticism with respect to this theoretical tradition stems partly from the frequency with which the actual music deviates from the formal model: there are "transitions" which have little to do with transition, "second themes" which are little more than transposed first themes, expositions which are developmental, etc. I suspect, therefore, that not only does the model not lie at the heart of the greatest formal significance, but also that the model itself is at least partly fictitious.
Mark: Actual music can't deviate from a formal model that isn't actual (or there, at least implicitly). Why would the fact that a transition has nothing to do with transition be significant if there were no convention that elicited the prediction that a sequence of events would play the role of being a transition? To put it another way: if it's not a transition, why raise the point? It would be easier to say "this is another event, or a new event." One would only point out that something is "a new event, but not a transition" is response to the anticipation that it should be one. Some second themes that are little more than transposed first themes can be found in pieces that were created in the early phases of the development of sonata form. In this case, the impoverished distinction between the themes would be attributed, not to the lack of reality of the form, but to the means and techniques of the composer, which historically had not reached the point where a highly differentiated theme, or theme group, could be made to seem logical, or coherent.
If your not talking about this kind of case, then the paucity of distinction in the "nominal" second theme could have been a statement, a distinction, deviating again, from the implicit dictates of the model of the form that had developed historically up to that point.
In any event, it is somewhat difficult to go further, talking only of abstract cases. To go further, we would have to get down to talking about some actual pieces.
One more point, about the uniqueness of form in many pieces created in the twentieth century, in particular, those Adorno says have "informal form." If the events, sections, and processes of the form seem like they could have been otherwise, if they don't create the illusion of being "logically inevitable" or "artistically the only way things could have gone," if they don't create the sense that "if you changed the order of any of the events, or any of the sections, then the piece would be damaged, goofed up, sabotaged," then you are dealing with a form that is contingent, a form that still has some sense of arbitrariness about it. Adorno says that has it virtue and its vice. The virtue is that it refuses to create the false illusion of being the only way things could be; the vice is that is seems less compelling, less necessary. Many of the sections of Ravel's "Le Enfant Sortilges (The Child and the Enchanted Things) after the first two of three sections, and before the last section, seem like they could have been in different order without completely wiping out the piece. What does that contingency matter? Why is it that sonata form resisted commodification longer and more resiliently that rondo or song form?
And more pertinently to the Mahler, how does this comment relate to a compositional attempt which tries to bridge and reveal, retain and reconcile the differences between sonata form and song form?