Guest Speaker
Dr. Peter Smith
Location: 2441 Humanities Bldg.
This paper analytically extends the theories of the
classical cadence of William Caplin and Janet Schmalfeldt through exploration
of cadential procedures in Robert Schumann—one of the most inventive
manipulators of cadential techniques in the context of nineteenth-century
instrumental forms. My focus, like
Schmalfeldt’s, is sonata exposition, exemplified by two generically related
compositions illustrating the ingenuity of Schumann’s cadential practice. In the first movements of his Violin Sonatas,
opera 105 and 121, Schumann reimagines cadential strategies derived from eighteenth-century
sonata form as integral components of his distinctive compositional voice. He is thus seen to compose not at
cross-purposes with signature elements of the classical style, as Charles Rosen
has argued, but rather to exploit eighteenth-century conventions as a means to
achieve his innovative artistic ends.
The secondary key areas of these
movements illustrate Schumann’s propensity for formal strategies based on an ironic separation of cadential content
from cadential function. His passages
of cadential content paradoxically serve to: (1) initiate the secondary area;
(2) develop tonal pairing rather than polarity as a foundation for expository harmonic
relationships; and (3) either delay (op. 121) or withhold (op. 105) across the
secondary area, the arrival of the mediant Stufe. Throughout, Schumann is seen to draw on
classical conventions not epigonistically but as integral components of his
vital nineteenth-century formal-tonal processes.
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