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Form and Repetition: Deleuze, Guillaume and Sonata Theory
Author(s) -
WALTHAMSMITH NAOMI
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
music analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.25
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1468-2249
pISSN - 0262-5245
DOI - 10.1111/musa.12098
Subject(s) - mozart , repetition (rhetorical device) , temporality , closure (psychology) , literature , movement (music) , philosophy , contingency , piano , sonata form , active listening , art , linguistics , aesthetics , epistemology , psychology , art history , communication , economics , market economy
This article proposes an alternative way to think about the process of expositional closure. The recent resurgence of Formenlehre has given rise to a dispute about the correlation between expositional closure and the sequence of local perfect authentic cadences in the second group. Noting that the two sides of the debate produce opposing representations of the temporality of listening, I draw upon philosophical and linguistic models of actualisation to theorise the way in which expositional closure is realised across the second group. To this end, I focus on the refrain cadences in the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491, which, as a means of deferring expositional closure, sit uneasily alongside other strategies of thematic loosening and cadential liquidation. The idea of the refrain leads me to Gilles Deleuze's theory of repetition and from there, via the notion of temps impliqué , to Gustave Guillaume's system of verb formation – both of which problematise the passage from potentiality to actuality, isolating a dimension of contingency as that which may or may not come to pass.