A PPEN DI X 2
!
Terminology
“Rotation” and “Deformation”
Rotation
Although they differ in their degrees of sub-
tlety and strictness, sonata movements are en-
gaged in a dialogue with a more basic archi-
tectural principle of large-scale recurrence that
we call rotation. Rotational structures are those
that extend through musical space by recycling
one or more times—with appropriate altera-
tions and adjustments—a referential thematic
pattern established as an ordered succession at
the piece’s outset. In each case the implication is
that once we have arrived at the end of the the-
matic pattern, the next step will bring us back
to its opening, or to a variant thereof, in or-
der to initiate another (often modified) move
through the configuration. The end leads into
the next beginning. This produces the impres-
sion of circularity or cycling in all formal types
that we regard as rotational. One metaphorical
image that might be invoked here is that of a
clock-hand sweeping through multiple hours,
with the face of the clock representing the suc-
cessive stages of the thematic pattern. 11:59:59
leads inevitably to 12:00:00 (= 0:00:00) and
another round through the cycle. Similarly,
the regeneration of day upon day, calendar year
upon calendar year, suggests how strongly this
perception of circular recurrence has been im-
pressed upon our experience.
611
Another, perhaps more sophisticated, meta-
phor is that of tracking a large spiral through
two or more cycles. No set of events that un-
folds in nonrecoverable, ever-elapsing time can
exist in a condition of complete identity to any
similar set that has preceded it. An essential
feature of all such constructions is the tension
generated between the blank linearity of non-
repeatable time and the quasi-ceremonial cir-
cularity of any repeatable events or structures
that are inlaid into it. Rotational procedures are
grounded in a dialectic of persistent loss (the
permanent death of each instant as it lapses into
the next) and the impulse to seek a temporal
“return to the origin,” a cyclical renewal and
rebeginning. And indeed, quite apart from the
issue of merely inhabiting a different temporal
space, successive rotations in music are often
subjected to telling variation: portions of them
may dwell longer on individual modules of the
original musical arrangement; they may omit
some of the ordered modules along the way; or
they may be shortened, truncated, telescoped,
expanded, developed, decorated, or altered with
ad hoc internal substitutions or episodic interpo-
lations. Not infrequently these varied multiple
recyclings build cumulatively toward a longer-
range goal. In addition, within any individual
rotation an internal, smaller-pattern cycling can
give the impression of a local subrotation. These
 612 Elements of Sonata Theory
include such things as thematic-block restate-
ments, the altered recurrences of larger sequen-
tial blocks or zones, and the like.
The rotational idea is an archetypal prin-
ciple of musical structure: a referential model
followed by (usually varied) recyclings or re-
statements. It underpins a generous diversity
of forms that may be distinguished from one
another on more surface-oriented levels: theme
and variations; strophic songs; strophic varia-
tion; rondos (chapter 18); different types of
ostinato-grounded works; and the like.1 Any
form that emphasizes return and rebeginning
is in dialogue with the rotational principle. 2
One of the defi ning features of a sonata is the
particular way in which it textures and shapes
the underlying rotational idea. In a sonata-form
composition the referential pattern laid down
at the beginning is typically much longer and
more internally differentiated than that found
in the smaller strophic or variation forms. Here
the relevant pattern is the exposition, the musi-
cal confi guration provided, in a two-part ex-
position, by P TR ’ S / C, including the subdi-
visions of each zone, if any. Discussions of the
rotational implications of the remainder of the
1. Our additional discussions of the rotational princi-
ple—especially as applied to music from later decades—
may be found in the following: Hepokoski, Sibelius: Sym-
phony No. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), pp. 23–26, 58–84; Darcy, “The Metaphysics of
Annihilation: Wagner, Schopenhauer, and the Ending
of the Ring,” Music Theory Spectrum, 16 (1994), 1–40
(see esp. pp. 10ff ); Hepokoski, “The Essence of Sibelius:
Creation Myths and Rotational Cycles in Luonnotar,”
The Sibelius Companion, ed. Glenda Dawn Goss (West-
port, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 121–46; Darcy,
“Bruckner’s Sonata Deformations,” Bruckner Studies, ed.
Timothy L. Jackson and Paul Hawkshaw (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 256–77; He-
pokoski, “Rotations, Sketches, and [Sibelius’s] Sixth
Symphony,” Sibelius Studies, ed. Timothy L. Jackson and
Veijo Murtomäki (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), pp. 322–51; Darcy, “Rotational Form, Te-
leological Genesis, and Fantasy-Projection in the Slow
Movement of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, 19th-Century
Music 24 (2001), 49–74; Hepokoski, “Beethoven Re-
ception: The Symphonic Tradition,” in Jim Samson,
ed., The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp.
424–59; and Hepokoski, “Structure, Implication, and
the End of Suor Angelica,” Studi pucciniani 3 (2004),
241–64.
sonata movement—in each of the five sonata
types—are omnipresent in the Elements.
Within a sonata, tonality is irrelevant to
the task of identifying the rotational principle.
The central thing is an implied or actualized
ordered sweep through a temporal sequence of
thematic modules, along with the assumption
that the most “natural” or expected continua-
tion of the layout’s last module will be to lead to
a relaunching of the initial module of the next,
thus producing the characteristic spiral or circu-
lar effect. Rotation is what we call a rhetorical
principle rather than a tonal one: it is governed
by the expectation of a temporal presentation-
sequence of thematic-modular elements, not by
harmonic procedures, even though, on another
plane of analysis, those harmonic features have
their own structures to articulate.
The underlying principle of recycling or re-
statement has also been widely noticed by oth-
ers. In Sonata Forms, for instance, Charles Rosen
pointed out the relevant feature particularly
with regard to what we would call triple-ro-
tational Type 3 sonatas: “The need for a bal-
anced symmetry always remained essential to
any conception of sonata in all its forms. (Many
2. Baroque ritornello structures, for instance, suggest
a set of varied refrain-like recurrences—the fi rst ritor-
nello (or tutti) often fi rst sounded as a patterned “begin-
ning”—that spin off into freer, diverse episodes for the
remainder of each rotation. (Or, conversely, once into the
piece we could also construe the rotations as comprising
freer, episodic beginnings—the “solo” passages—each
of which is concluded by a refrain-like reference to the
ritornello or a portion thereof.) Extending such ideas
to varied strophic songs with refrains and to rondos
is an easy matter. Similarly, da capo (large-formatted
ABA’s) or other emphatically ternary structures could
be interpreted as two “external” rotations of a musi-
cal pattern, separated by a contrasting interpolation in
the middle. Extending the metaphor further, one might
wonder whether we should entertain the possibility that
the contrasting central section of such forms might even
be understood as a substitution for an unsounded middle
rotation: an erasing or writing over a rotation that is
potentially conceptually present but rendered tacit by
the events sounded on the acoustic surface. However we
might seek to assess these “ternary” considerations and
interpretive possibilities, they are relevant to the ways
in which we choose to understand the developmental
spaces of sonata forms.
 Terminology: “Rotation” and “Deformation”
development sections reveal this, as they take up
the complete thematic pattern of the exposition,
and develop each theme in turn.)”3 So much is
obvious. But even while endorsing such prior
statements, Sonata Theory distinguishes itself
from them in three ways. First, we conceive the
restatement-symmetry postulate as wedded to
the notion of circularity (as opposed to mere
carriage-return repetition.) Second, we treat the
idea more flexibly. We include into the general
concept of circular repetition the related idea of
substantially altered restatements, such as devel-
opmental half-rotations, truncated rotations, ro-
tations with episodic substitutes “writing over”
some of the expected individual elements, ro-
tations with newly included interpolations, in-
ternal digressions from the governing rotational
thread, occasional reorderings of the modules,
and the like. In general, the rotational character
of the whole sonata movement is underscored
whenever a development section begins with a
treatment of the primary theme (P) or whenever
a coda is added that is based on P-theme mate-
rial—regardless of what follows that material.
(Interpreting “freer” thematic patterns that only
begin rotationally is a challenge called forth by
the theory.) Third, because the rotational idea
was so important as an underlying assumption
in the historical formation of the genre of so-
nata form (and because it persisted so palpably
in so many later sonatas, extending through the
nineteenth century and beyond), Sonata Theory
urges the elevation of the rotational principle to
become a foundational axiom of interpretation
that in one way or another is implicated in ev-
ery sonata, even when it is apparently absent or
deeply obscured in developments. To be sure,
literally nonrotational developments are an op-
tion within the style—though they are not as
common as might be supposed—and we hope
that we are not misread as encouraging the in-
terpretational forcing of any such development
3. Rosen, Sonata Forms, p. 157.
4. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary
[1971]. Definition 1 of “rotation,” not surprisingly,
invokes the presence of an axis, which is less unprob-
lematically applicable to our use of the term in Sonata
Theory: “The action of moving round a centre, or of
turning round (and round) on an axis; also, the action
of producing a motion of this kind.” Closer again to our
613
along Procrustean-rotational lines. For such
developments the main hermeneutic problem
might be to wonder whether (and to what de-
gree) what is actually presented on the music’s
acoustic surface as a nonrotational event is to be
grasped as blanking-out or writing over a more
normatively rotational option. The question re-
mains open: Is the rotational norm for develop-
ments sufficiently powerful to suggest its tacit
presence (perhaps as “a choice not made”) even
in cases when it is replaced by something else?
Devising a term for a previously unlabeled
but generally recognizable practice is not easy.
We use “rotation” in the familiar sense provided
in defi nition 2a of the Oxford English Dictionary:
“the fact of coming round again in succession;
a recurring series or period.”4 This meaning of
the word is virtually identical with two of the
OED defi nitions of “cycle”: “a recurrent round
or course (of successive events, phenomena,
etc.); a regular order or succession in which
things recur; a round or series which returns
upon itself ” [defi nition 3]; or “a round, course,
or period through which anything runs in or-
der to its completion; a single complete period
or series of successive events, etc.” [defi nition
4]. In the abstract, then, another term for ro-
tational form would be cyclical form or cyclic or-
ganization. The problem here is that that term
already means something different not merely
in formal analysis but also in analytical work
applied directly to sonata-based structures. It
refers to a compositional strategy in which im-
portant or motto themes or motives from an
initial movement return, however transformed,
in later movements.5 “Rotation” and “rotational
form” do not have these prior (and in this situ-
ation, misleading) connotations. This is not to
say that “rotation” is unused for other purposes
in music theory. The term has a specific mean-
ing in the analysis of serial practice and ordered
musical sets—as well as in the techniques of cer-
application of “rotation” is defi nition 2b: “Regular and
recurring succession in office, duties, etc., of a number
of persons. Freq. In phr. by or in rotation.”
5. See, e.g., the discussions of cyclic integration, cyclic
organization, and cyclic form—with nuanced defi ni-
tions—in Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony,” pp.
7–9, 179–82, 246–47, 250–51, 252, 254–57, 258–59,
262–67, 280–300, 308–13, 318–20, and 327–34.
 614 Elements of Sonata Theory
tain kinds of minimalist patterns that are subse-
quently subjected to an organized reordering. (It
can refer, for example, to the shifting of the last
element of a succession to become the fi rst—a
single operation that is itself usually considered
a “rotation,” although, properly considered, the
full rotation would not have occurred until all
of the elements in play have gone through one
cycle of these reorderings.) These other usages
of “rotation,” though, refer to different reperto-
ries and different kinds of discussions from the
one in question here. Confusion among these
uses of “rotation” seems unlikely.
What other substitutions might there be
for “rotation”? “Strophic form” carries verbal
and poetic-textual connotations not appropri-
ate here. “Theme and variations” suggests ir-
relevant generic connotations and traditions of
a different kind. “Varied repetitions” or “varied
restatements”—when used apart from the rota-
tional concept as the guiding backdrop—seem
bland, unimaginatively divorced from the im-
plied circularity of the procedure. Robert P.
Morgan’s recent treatment of what he called
“circular form” displaying successive “cycles”
and “cyclic renewal” (for example, in the Tristan
Prelude) closely approximates our use of “rota-
tion,” although the methodology and interests
at stake in that description differ from our own.6
Of the available terms, we have come to favor
“rotation,” although by no means do we seek to
banish parallel descriptions from our own work:
we sometimes also refer to our rotations as cy-
cles, varied repetitions, or varied restatements,
as the occasion suggests. In referring to the
larger structure and musical process, however,
the term “rotational form” is to be preferred.
Deformation
Sonata Theory views compositions as individual-
ized dialogues with an intricate system of norms
and standard options. We seek to illuminate the
expressive, dramatic, and contextual meanings
of single compositions, in part by inquiring how
6. Morgan, “Circular Form in the Tristan Prelude,”
Journal of the American Musicological Society 53 (2000),
69–103.
the compositional choices presented in the indi-
vidual work confi rm, extend, or override those
options as we move from phrase to phrase. The
desired goal is to be able to read the moment-
to-moment action of a piece through the lenses
of (reconstructed) generic expectation and flex-
ible generic possibility.
We use the term “deformation” to mean the
stretching of a normative procedure to its maxi-
mally expected limits or even beyond them—or
the overriding of that norm altogether in order
to produce a calculated expressive effect. It is
precisely the strain, the distortion of the norm
(elegantly? beautifully? wittily? cleverly? storm-
ily? despairingly? shockingly?) for which the
composer strives at the deformational moment.
The expressive or narrative point lies in the ten-
sion between the limits of a competent listener’s
field of generic expectations and what is made
to occur—or not occur—in actual sound at that
moment. Within any individual exemplar (such
as a single musical composition) operating under
the shaping influence of a community-shared
genre-system, any exceptional occurrence along
these lines calls attention to itself as a strong ex-
pressive effect. As such it marks an important
event of the composition at hand. A deforma-
tion may occur either locally, producing a mo-
mentary or short-range effect, or broadly, over
the large-scale architecture of a piece of music
as a whole.
Connotations of “Deformation”: Paradoxes of
the “Normative” and “Non-Normative”; the
Need for Nuance
Since the concept of deformation is a central fea-
ture of Sonata Theory, we have tried to be care-
ful in selecting and applying that term. While
we do intend “deformation” to imply a strain
and distortion of the norm—the composer’s ap-
plication of uncommon creative force toward
the production of a singular aesthetic effect—
we do not use this term in its looser, more col-
loquial sense, one that can connote a negative
assessment of aesthetic defectiveness, imperfec-
 Terminology: “Rotation” and “Deformation”
tion, or ugliness. Here our defi nitions must be
explicit. Within our system, “deformation” is
a technical term referring to a striking way of
stretching or overriding a norm. As a techni-
cal term it is intended to carry no judgmentally
negative connotation, as in some popular usages
of the word.7 We understand that other scholars,
for other purposes, may have used the term to
suggest some of these negative connotations. 8
But that is not our intention. We are suggest-
ing neither that a sonata deformation is an unat-
tractive structure (as opposed to any supposedly
more attractive or socially preferable norm) nor
that it is the result of a misguided execution on
the part of the composer. Nor, more locally, are
we implying that the deformation of a medial
caesura, for example, results in something that
is aesthetically negative.9 To avoid encouraging
such connotations in our own writing, we steer
clear of the verb “to deform” along with (espe-
cially) the related word “deformed” (let alone
“deformity”!) to describe the effect of a defor-
mation. Instead of a “deformed recapitulation”
we prefer to write of a “recapitulation subjected
to a deformation.”10 The abstract noun “defor-
7. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary
[1971] provides three defi nitions for the word “defor-
mation.” The fi rst two have negative implications that
do not reflect how we are using the term: (1) “The ac-
tion (or result) of deforming or marring the form or
beauty of; disfi gurement, defacement”; (2) “Alteration
of form for the worse; esp. in controversial use, the op-
posite of reformation. . . . An altered form of a word in
which its proper form is for some purpose perverted [as
God to ‘od].” Instead, our adoption of the term is analo-
gous to the third, more technical (and nonjudgmen-
tal) defi nition: (3) “Physics. Alteration of form or shape;
relative displacement of the parts of a body or surface
without breach of continuity; an altered form of.”
8. As perhaps in Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the
Avant-Garde, trans. Gerald Fitzgerald (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1968), esp. pp. 176–79, in which
Poggioli refers, among other things, to the effects of
“neoprimitivist deformation,” “ritual and allegrorical
deformation,” “stylistic deformation,” and “avant-garde
deformation” (“shocking” or nonrealistic representa-
tions) in early twentieth-century modernist art.—Pi-
casso, Braque, and others. Poggioli initially played up
the negative connotations of these things in the lan-
guage of their critics (“the principle of dehumaniza-
tion,” etc.) but soon turned to something of an apologia:
“Avant-garde deformation . . . also becomes a tradition
and a stylistic convention.”)
615
mation” is cooler, more detached—hopefully,
more connotationally “technical.” It marks only
our noticing (and often relishing) of a remark-
ably unusual compositional choice; it is not
judgmental.
Nevertheless, we also recognize that how-
ever carefully one might insist upon one’s inten-
tions to provide only a “technical” defi nition of
any term, words have connotational, lateral slip-
pages and past histories that can escape our con-
trol. And it may still be that some readers, for
whatever purposes, might mistakenly read into
it only unintended implications of the negative
or the critical. For such readers—and for any
readers curious about a more expanded treat-
ment of our view of the term and its conno-
tations—we pause here to examine the matter
(and related issues) with more patience and nu-
ance. This initially entails a backing-up to some
fundamental aspects of how we understand so-
nata form.
As indicated in chapter 1, our view of so-
nata form is essentially dialogic, not conforma-
tional. It is not the task of a sonata merely to
“conform” to a pre-existing template. On the
9. Complementarily—to suggest a clarifying reductio ad
absurdum—no serious scholar could maintain, within an
analytical situation, that merely recognizing a familiar
compositional choice as a “norm” or as “normative”
inevitably connotes a tacit personal approval or moral
endorsement of that norm. On the contrary (of course),
it is merely an acknowledgment of standard operating
procedure within the quasi-formulaic genre under ob-
servation (as in, e.g., “in tonal practice the norm has
been to resolve dissonant sevenths downward”), an
awareness of what usually occurs, for whatever histori-
cal reasons, under certain circumstances and traditions
of musical manufacturing.
10. OED, “Deformed,” fi rst defi nition: “marred in ap-
pearance; disfi gured, defaced.” Under the entry “de-
formed” there is no technical or neutral use that would
be applicable to its potential relevance to the field of
physics (see n. 7, defi nition 3 above—closer to our usage
of “deformation”). Nonetheless, the term “to deform”
is encountered in scientific writing, as in the New Ency-
clopedia Brittanica: Micropedia (1994) entry, “Deformation
and Flow,” cited in the text above. Still, its absence from
the OED helps to confi rm our sense that “deformed”
has stronger negative connotations, a situation that we
do not believe is true for “deformation.”
 616 Elements of Sonata Theory
contrary, a sonata is a musical utterance that is
set into dialogue with generic options that are
themselves taken socially to be sonata-defi ning
(establishing the guidelines for composition and
reception under the categories of the genre). In
this dialogic process the fl ash-point “now” of
the unfolding structure moves progressively
through various action-spaces. Within a sonata,
what we regard as an action-space—a flexible
concept—can be quite small (P, TR, MC, S,
C), rather broad (exposition, development, re-
capitulation, coda), or very broad indeed (sin-
gle movement, multimovement plan). The dia-
logue inherent in any sonata form may include
the occasional stretching or overriding of the
options on offer from the genre. These decisions
bring those moments into the realm of what we
call deformation. But how can we characterize
more carefully what it is that is being subjected
to a deformation?
Each action-space of the sonata is generically
present to make possible an ongoing dialogue
of compositional decisions with a background
constellation of standard or traditional options
(norms). This is nothing less than what it means
to work within a genre—any genre—one that
furnishes an ongoing horizon of expectations
for the receiver. All genres (indeed, all familiar
actions) involve systems of norms and guide-
lines, typical and expected procedures. In the
case of music these are grounded in increments
of elapsing time. We are inescapably involved
with the results of laying down compositional
decision after decision, module after module,
in time, presumably with a larger purpose or
grander coherence in view all the while. The
result is a temporal process of ongoing dia-
logue—successive modular decisions that invite
us to understand them, one by one (and then
conceptually joined together in groups or clus-
ters), according to the guidelines of a backdrop
of a set of implied norms for the genre, which
the reception community is assumed to share.
Since the basic, initial process here is temporal,
the fundamental concept is that of a process, not
11. As pointed out elsewhere in this book, however, in
music the fictive artifice of “psychological” time (sug-
gesting the possibility of backing up, recapturing, de-
a “thing,” a self-realizing verb, unspooling itself
in time, not a static noun.
Nonetheless, once a compositional (modular)
decision has been made (via notation or perfor-
mance in the case of a sonata), it is now part of
the piece’s history, fi xed in place, unalterable.
This is because chronological time is irreversible
on the work’s acoustic surface: one cannot take
back in reality what has already been sounded.11
From this perspective, the already sounded is
converted into fi xed units of modular space. In
chapter 2 we compared the process of composi-
tion to that of constructing a sonic bridge over
ever larger stretches of otherwise empty time or
to the laying-down of “one appropriately styl-
ized musical tile after another”—in which each
tile, more fundamentally, was also described as a
“space of action.” In this way decisions regarding
the fi lling of offered spans of time lay out real-
ized spaces, which in turn are analogous to con-
ceptual spaces. The result is an individualized
“shape”: an array of modules that has produced
a fi xed musical idea in time. The “shape” pro-
duced is metaphorically analogous to a “shaped”
vessel or container: one can perceive the musical
result sculpturally, in terms of how it realizes
melodic pattern, meter, tempo, articulation, dy-
namics, timbre, density, drive-to-cadence, and
the like. One might regard music as sculpted
time, as a temporal sculpture in sound.
All genres of music presuppose genre-de-
fi ning guidelines for the production of typical
or more or less standardized “shapes” (modular
arrays in each of the available action-zones). In
the case of sonata form, with all of its complexi-
ties and possibilities, these guidelines are mani-
fold and varied. Within the sonata we have not
merely one or two but numerous standard pro-
cedures available, which in turn means that the
expected contours or “energy-shapes” of any
individual work are supple in their realizations.
(There is no single standard “shape” for expo-
sitions, for instance, nor for its internal zones,
P, TR, S, and C, although in a more general
sense one is invited to recognize any individ-
nying, repeating, re-experiencing, and so on) is typi-
cally counterpointed against the inescapable “reality” of
chronological time.
 Terminology: “Rotation” and “Deformation”
ual exemplar of the possibilities when one hears
it.)
Under these circumstances, it is composition-
ally possible—and was even doubtless encour-
aged—to submit such generically received, stan-
dardized “energy-shapes” to significant strain,
stretching, and overriding. The term deformation
refers to such situations. Musical deformations
are purposeful distortions of the standardized
“action- or texture-shapes” on offer to the com-
poser from the ordered complex of pre-exist-
ing generic expectations and traditional proce-
dures. Structural deformations are the results of
applications of compositional tension and force
to produce a surprising, tension-provoking, or
engaging result. More to the point, on both
the production and reception side of things, as
part of the compositional “game” it was expected
(“normative”) that, within the then-current
boundaries of taste and decorum, a composer
would apply conceptual force here and there
to strain or alter what is otherwise a bland or
neutral set of conventional options and proce-
dures—mere starting-points for the mature and
experienced artist. As has been observed over
the decades by virtually all commentators on
the sonata repertory, applying such forces and
purposeful generic “misshapings” is just what
can give a composition personality, memorabil-
ity, appeal, interest, expressive power.
This is a crucial point. Deformations are
compositional surprises, engaging forays into
the unanticipated. But the paradox of art is that
the nature of the game at hand also and always
includes the idea that we are to expect the unex-
pected. If deviations from the merely expected
never happen within an individual work, that is
no sign of aesthetic health or integrity.12 On the
contrary, if expressively charged stretchings or
transgressions of standardized shapes and pro-
cedures are not present at all, the work is more
12. Nor, of course, do health and integrity (compo-
sitional “excellence” or community “legitimacy”) lie
only in the deformational moments. The central thing
is the clever interplay—the dialogue—between a work’s
adherence to and departures from conventional expec-
tation. Both have their roles to play, and the genre qua
genre has things that it (socially) “wants to say” through
the vagaries of the individual work. See appendix 1.
617
likely to be sidelined by historical consensus as
unimaginative, composition-by-the-numbers, a
boiler-plate product. This means that in the case
of sonata form—and certainly in the hands of
classical masters—it was perfectly “normative”
to intersperse into the individual work instances
of the “non-normative” or the rivetingly defor-
mational. Within the artifice of art the concept
of the “non-normative” or “nonconforming” is
housed under a broader concept of what one is
generically prepared to accept as standard pro-
cedure. Simply put, what is “non-normative”
on one level of understanding becomes “norma-
tive” under a wider span of consideration.13
In this more expansive sense, instances of aes-
thetic deformation are indications of normality
within strong works of art. It is both historically
inaccurate and simple-minded to understand
deformations as ipso facto violating a fundamen-
tal premise of the genre at hand or introduc-
ing illicitly foreign, unpleasant, or moralistically
tainted elements of the “abnormal” or “disfi g-
ured” into an originally idyllic, positive model.
Indeed, the reverse is true. Deformation, strain,
and conceptual distortion were standard strate-
gies within the sonata game, which was played
increasingly under the auspices of a growing
demand for originality and apparent “depth”
of the compositional idea. (What would have
been aesthetically “abnormal,” if not amateur-
ish, would be to shy away from all signs of them
altogether.)
Within the sonata structures of the period
in question “progressive” connoisseurs have
typically taken such thematic or structural de-
formations—in Johann Stamitz, C. P. E. Bach,
Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and so on—as signs
of creative vigor, not of any debilitating nega-
tive. The distortions and localized reshapings
of these composers have historically been as-
sessed as positive features, marks of original-
13. See also the fi nal subsection of chapter 15, “The
Role of the Listener,” especially n. 47, which references
Wolfgang Iser (The Act of Reading, p. 112) on the role
of the reader in expecting the unexpected within the
plots of novels.
 618 Elements of Sonata Theory
ity and personal voice. With the exception of
a few grumbling caveats from waning sectors
of “old-world” traditionalists circa 1780–1820,
they have not been regarded as off-putting dis-
fi gurements or “disabilities” to be contrasted
with some tacitly posited concept of the sup-
posedly “normal” or “well formed” of how
exemplars of the genre “ought” to proceed.14
Such a viewpoint—which would see in struc-
tural deformations and innovative procedures
only implications of the exceeding of proper or
socially acceptable limits, only transgressions of
good taste—is historically associated principally
with social and aesthetic conservatives wield-
ing their eroding claims of authority to cling to
the way things once were (or were imagined to
be). Nonetheless, what becomes clear, especially
as one moves further into the nineteenth cen-
tury, is that a primarily technical local strategy
within an individual piece—what we are calling
a structural deformation (Witz and originality
in various degrees of strength)—could be seized
upon by both proponents and opponents of any
“new” or “developing” art form as evidence of
either, on the one hand, a brilliant display of
breathtaking creativity or, on the other, a lapse
of compositional judgment from a composer of
questionable taste or talent.15
For all of these reasons one should not call
attention to only the potentially negative slip-
pages of the word “deformation” or confl ate
them inappropriately with concepts of defor-
mity or disability. Such a one-sided view, in his-
torical terms, promotes the blinkered views of
aesthetic and social reactionaries. Moreover, it
14. This claim has been made recently, and mistakenly
attributed to us as a latent implication within the terms
“norm” and “deformation,” by Joseph N. Straus, “Nor-
malizing the Abnormal: Disability in Music and Music
Theory,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 59
(2006), forthcoming. In our view the arbitrary and ex-
clusive binaries driving Straus’s argument—the catego-
ries that he offered his readers were limited to only “well
formed” vs. “deformed” and “normal” vs. “abnormal”
—are false choices, too narrowly drawn to engage the
complexities of the topics at hand.
15. This obviously touches on the historical-recep-
tion issues surrounding certain later, more “extreme”
or fl amboyant rhetorical- or structural-deformational
procedures—those found in Schubert, Berlioz, Cho-
misses the complexity of what the term, with all
of its purposely implied connotations of strain
and distortion, seeks to convey. Above all, such
an interpretation bypasses the crucial distinc-
tion, central to the philosophy of art for centu-
ries, between life and art. As Aristotle noted in
the Poetics with regard to the effects of staged
tragedy, what would displease us in life—ter-
rors and sorrows, violence and tears, brutal and
unhappy outcomes—can be profoundly moving
in the displaced realm of art. We often savor and
applaud in art what we do not in life. Judgments
that we might make in life-situations are not
properly transferable to the world of distanced
artifice, to the world of artificiality that is the
most basic presupposition of the art-situation.
Similarly, terminology that can carry nega-
tive connotations when applied to assessments
in life can carry neutral or positive ones when
applied to the very different situation of art.
Potential negatives in life can be reversed into
positives in the reception-worlds of their meta-
morphosed analogues within art. It may be for
reasons along these lines that musical distortions
or intentional “misshapings” of a generically re-
ceived action- and texture-space within music
(“deformations”) have so often been hailed as
attributes of genius and originality—indica-
tors of aesthetic seriousness and pleasure. Our
term “deformation,” with its charged edginess
and flavor of aesthetic risk, seeks to convey this
richer, more complex world of connotation.
pin, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Strauss,
Mahler, and so on. To be sure, each of these composers
had their legions of champions. On the other hand, in
varying degrees, some of the works of these composers
came to be placed under a quasi-moralistic suspicion
by conservative, masculinist, or aggressively nation-
alist (sometimes racialist) critics as deviant, dilettant-
ish, socially undesirable, decadent, or degenerate. As
strategies within an aesthetic genre, structural-defor-
mational strategies may be “morally neutral” in them-
selves, but history has also shown us—often much to
our consternation—that they may also be seized upon
and denounced by cultural critics for their own cultural
purposes.
 Terminology: “Rotation” and “Deformation”
Precedents in the Use of the Term
Strictly considered, the term “deformation”
is not new with us, although prior to our use
of it, it has not been much applied to musi-
cal works. We have adapted it primarily from
leading traditions of twentieth-century literary
criticism (Russian formalism, narrative theory,
genre theory, reader-response theory) but also,
metaphorically, from its usages in physics and
mechanics. Within the latter fields the term is
emphatically technical. The New Encyclopedia
Britannica: Micropedia, 15th ed., vol. 3 (Chicago,
1994), for instance, contains an entry under
“Deformation and Flow,” one that even uses the
verb “to deform” neutrally:
In physics, [deformation refers to the] alteration
in shape or size of a body under the influence of
mechanical forces. Flow is a change in deforma-
tion that continues as long as the force is applied.
. . . Under normal conditions . . . solids deform
when they are subjected to forces. Most solids ini-
tially deform elastically; that is to say, they return
to their original shape when the load is removed.
. . . Eventually, plastic flow will come to an end:
deformation will ultimately tend to concentrate
in one area, which will break. This ability of duc-
tile materials to flow plastically under load is fun-
damental to their usefulness in engineering.
Here “deformation” is descriptive of a certain
state of a solid object—a change of shape, a de-
parture from its original, normal, or customary
state resulting from the application of force.16
No judgment is made that the deformation in
question (say, the bending of a steel bar, which
might be a desirable end) is a negative disfig-
urement or the result of a marring of the way
that the object in question ought really to be. If,
metaphorically, we wish to imagine the genre
of sonata form (or any portion thereof, such as
a medial caesura or an EEC) as a solid object—
such things are at least solid concepts governed
16. Cf. n. 7, defi nition 3.
17. If the scientific metaphor were applied strictly to
musical composition, every creative shaping of the ge-
neric norms, however minimal, would be considered a
deformation. Such a metaphor could be sustained, but
we prefer to use the term “deformation” to refer pri-
619
by norms—the application of force that would
subject it to distortion or reshaping would be
the creative will of the composer.17 The act of
composition, producing something in dialogue
with norms as they are socially received, could
be understood as producing a “flow” in certain
portions of those norms—perhaps a straining,
a stretching, an expansion, or a bulging-out;
perhaps the omission of an important proce-
dure; perhaps the substitution of an unexpected
event for an expected one. In the case of musical
norms the composer does not alter the genre it-
self through such deformations. Existing outside
the composition proper, the genre is that which
provides the guidelines for understanding what
occurs inside the individual piece.
Within the humanities the notion of expres-
sive alterations applied to a conventional model
(in our case, a highly complex one) is familiar.
Here one encounters the term “deformation”
with some regularity, often as a technical term
without a judgmentally negative connotation.
In its individual appearances the term has signif-
icant, sometimes broad intersections with our
use of it. Those appearances help to illuminate
the history behind our selection of the term.
But in the literature those intersections are not
always total. It is also true that “deformation”
has sometimes been used to describe effects (or
to address issues) that are different from those
that we have in mind in Sonata Theory. It can
be helpful to remind ourselves of these usages.
Some derive from the early-twentieth-cen-
tury tradition of Russian formalism and refer
especially to the “enstrangement” or “defamil-
iarization” of ordinary language within po-
etry—a concern that extends to the very defi-
nition of art itself.
The basic concepts of formalism—“transrational
language,” “deautomatization,” “deformation,”
“deliberately difficult form” . . . and others—are
merely negations corresponding to various indices
marily to extreme strainings of the norms, or to their
abandonment altogether—a situation sometimes similar
to the “breaking of plastic flow” in physics. One reason
for this is that aesthetic norms are flexible concepts, re-
maining essentially “themselves” even while permitting
much variation in their realizations.
 620 Elements of Sonata Theory
of practical, communicative language. (Mikhail
Bakhtin, 1928 [critical of Russian formalism]) 18
Dynamic form is not generated by means of
combination or merger (the often-used concept
of “correspondence”), but by means of interac-
tion, and, consequently, the pushing forward of
one group of factors at the expense of another. In
so doing, the advanced factor deforms the subor-
dinate ones. The sensation of form is always the
sensation of the flow (and, consequently of the
alteration) of correlation between the subordinat-
ing, constructive factor and the subordinated fac-
tors. . . . Art lives by means of this interaction and
struggle. Without this sensation of subordination
and deformation of all factors by the one factor
playing the constructive role, there is no fact of
art.” (Yuri Tynianov, 1924) 19
Or, as explained in an overview of such thought
by two more recent writers (and extended here
to include the idea of narrative, which brings us
close to Sonata Theory concerns):
The many Formalist studies in this tradition [plot
studies, narratology] describe how narratives are
“made” by “deforming” everyday narrative much
as poetry is “made” by deforming everyday lan-
guage. They developed an arsenal of techniques
and concepts that are by now familiar: fabula, siu-
zhet, repetition, parallelism, morphology, substi-
tution, motivation, and baring the device. (Gary
Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, 1990) 20
In the 1920s Roman Jakobson applied the term
“deformation” to the larger issue of the validity
of anti- or nonrealistic representation. His argu-
ment on behalf of the “deformation” of “artistic
norms” also comes close to serving as a clearer
precedent for the (perhaps more limited) way in
which we use the term:
18. P. N. Medvedev/M. M. Bakhtin, The Formal Method
in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological
Poetics [1928], trans. Albert J. Wehrle (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 87. Cf. pp. 89, 97.
19. Tynianov, The Problem of Verse Language [orig. 1924],
ed. and trans. Michael Sosa and Brent Harvey (Ann Ar-
bor, Mich.: Ardis, 1981), p. 33.
20. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of
a Prosaics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990),
p. 19.
But the perception of those of a more conserva-
tive persuasion continues to be determined by the
old canons; they will accordingly interpret any
deformation of these canons by a new movement
as a rejection of the principle of verisimilitude, as
a deviation from realism. . . . [Thus in the “real-
ism” debate one needs to consider the basic issue:]
The tendency to deform given artistic norms conceived
as an approximation of reality. . . . [Some anti-real-
ists may take as an artistic principle:] I rebel against
a given artistic code and view its deformation as a more
accurate rendition of reality . . . [while critics may
argue:] I am conservative and view the deformation of
the artistic code, to which I subscribe, as a distortion of
reality. . . . The conservative, of course, fails to
recognize the self-sufficient value of deformation.
(Roman Jakobson, 1921) 21
A similar position vis-à-vis the “art” question
has been taken in reader-response criticism, for
instance, in the work of Wolfgang Iser (tak-
ing off, here, from a related idea that he wishes
to adapt and improve upon, E. H. Gombrich’s
well-known principle of “schema and correc-
tion”).22 In this case Iser’s remarks, both in their
content and in their general tone, are close in-
deed—virtually identical—to the concepts that
underpin our sense of deformation:
Thus [in Gombrich’s view] the act of represen-
tation is seen as a continual process of modify-
ing traditional schemata, the correction of which
provides an ever more “suitable” representation
of the world. . . . What is important for our pur-
poses, however, is the fact that the correction vio-
lates a norm of expectation contained within the
picture itself. In this way, the act of representa-
tion creates its own conditions of reception. . . .
[The observer of a work of visual art] is guided
by the correction to the extent that he will try
21. Jakobson, “On Realism in Art” [orig. 1921] in Read-
ings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, ed.
Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska (Ann Arbor:
Michigan Slavic Publications, 1978), pp. 41, 43.
22. E.g., in Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study of Pic-
torial Representation (Oxford: Phaidon, 1960; 5th ed.
1977); and The Image and the Eye (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1982).
 Terminology: “Rotation” and “Deformation”
to discover the motive behind the change in the
schema.
It is in this sense that the concepts of schema
and correction have a heuristic value as regards
the strategies of literary texts. . . . Herein lies the
particular function of the literary schemata [“the
repertoire of social norms and literary conven-
tions”]—in themselves they are elements of the
text, and yet they are neither aspect nor part of
the aesthetic object. The aesthetic object signal-
izes its presence through the deformations of the
schemata, and the reader, in recognizing these de-
formations, is stimulated into giving the aesthetic
object its shape. . . . It is here that the strategies
play their part, in laying down the lines along
which the imagination is to run. (Iser, 1976) 23
Also close to our use of the term is a passage
from Paul Ricoeur.
Innovation remains a form of behavior governed
by rules. The labor of imagination is not born
from nothing. It is bound in one way or another
to the tradition’s paradigms. But the range of so-
lutions of vast. It is deployed between the two
poles of servile application and calculated devia-
tion, passing through every degree of “rule-gov-
erned deformation” . . . .
23. Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Re-
sponse [orig. 1976] (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1978), pp. 91–92.
621
What is more, this deviation may come into
play on every level, in relation to the types, the
genres, even to the formal principle of concordant
discordance. The fi rst type of deviation [“types”],
it would seem, is constitutive of every individual
work. Each work stands apart from every other
work. . . . Rule-governed deformation consti-
tutes the axis around which the various changes
of paradigm through application are arranged. It
is this variety of applications that confers a his-
tory on the productive imagination and that, in
counterpoint to sedimentation, makes a narrative
tradition possible. (Ricoeur, 1983) 24
Sonata Theory, too, is concerned with “rule-
governed deformation,” and, with Iser, we af-
fi rm that the text’s “reader”—in our case the
listener to the composition, the analyst, the in-
terpreter—needs to be familiar both with so-
nata norms and with the standard principles and
strategies of their deformation. As for the term
“deformation,” it has both a solid and an hon-
orable history within several disparate fields in
the twentieth century. For us, no substitute for
it (“transformation”? “alteration”? “variant”?)
carries as historically rich—or, more impor-
tantly, as proper—a connotation.
24. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative [orig. 1983], trans.
Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1:69–70.