A Sonata Theory Handbook

A Sonata Theory Handbook is a step-by-step, seminar-like introduction to Sonata Theory, a new approach to the study and interpretation of sonata form. The book updates and advances the outline of the method first presented in Hepokoski and Darcy’s 2006 Elements of Sonata Theory. It blends explanations of the theory’s general principles—dialogic form, expositional action zones, trajectories toward generically normative cadences, rotation theory, the five sonata types, the special case of the minor-mode sonata, and more—with illustrations of them in practice through close, extended analyses of eight individual movements by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms. Central to the method is the merging of historically informed, technical analysis with the concerns of hermeneutic interpretation. The book features an inclusive engagement with recent developments in form theory, schema theory, and other related studies since 2006, including some of the language and insights of cognitive research into music perception and the more generalized concerns of conceptual metaphor theory. It ultimately builds to reflections on sonata form in the romantic era: the flexible applicability of Sonata Theory to mid- and late-nineteenth-century works.