2 - Forms and formulae

Summary

For Liszt, a large part of the symphonic problem was the future of sonata form after the death of Beethoven. In 1852 he eulogised: ‘For us musicians, Beethoven's work is the pillar of cloud and fire which guided the Israelites through the desert – a pillar of cloud to guide us by day, a pillar of fire to guide us by night, so that we may progress both day and night’. That same year his pupil Hans von Bülow wrote in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik that the post-Beethoven piano sonata had little to commend it apart from the works of Hummel (the Sonata in F# minor), Schumann and Chopin. To be sure, a myriad of sonatas had been published between 1827 and 1852, not least the late sonatas of Schubert and the Grande sonate by Alkan, which Liszt would certainly have added to Bülow's roll of honour, but on the whole the form was in decline. The very prestige of Beethoven's reputation had resulted in a plethora of production-line sonatas by younger composers anxious to establish their credentials with an essay in the genre. Schumann summarised the position as it seemed to him in 1839:

We have been long silent respecting achievements in the field of the sonata. Nor have we anything to report today. … It is remarkable that those who write sonatas are generally unknown men; and it is also strange that the older composers, yet living among us, who grew up in the season of bloom of the sonata, and among whom only Cramer and Moscheles are distinguished, cultivate this form least! […]