Towards a Theory of Early-Romantic First-Movement Concerto Form: A Study of Felix Mendelssohn and His Contemporaries

Abstract

Contemporary theories of concerto first-movement form frequently approach their subject matter by setting de facto geographical, cultural, or historical restrictions on the genre. However, whether explicit or not, focusing exclusively on any specific concerto practice entails a biased prioritization of a selected group of works, inevitably resulting in a set of canonized musical norms. A view of the repertoire based on this type of norms is inherently problematic. This approach inexorably (and arbitrarily) excludes an important non-canonical portion of the repertoire, prioritizing a minority of privileged composers—the “Masters”—and their works. Modern music-theory scholarship has called into question this tendency in concerto Formenlehre (e.g., Horton 2011, Vande Moortele 2013, Taylor 2016, Wingfield 2008), positing that the Viennese influence on early nineteenth-century concerto composition has been overestimated. I echo this position and suggest my own tentative solution to this “concerto problem”: to acknowledge the “risk of circularity” inherent in the musical canon, minimizing its authority as an analytical or aesthetic criterion and opting instead for a context-sensitive approach. Felix Mendelssohn’s concertos have a particularly relevant role within this discussion. Although influenced by the Viennese compositional tradition, these pieces also exhibit important idiosyncratic characteristics, many of which arose from earlier non-Mozartian formal precedents. Thus, it is possible to explain Mendelssohn’s concertos as elaborations of the Mozartian form, and, at the same time, as direct “descendants” of other late-eighteenth-century concerto practices. Hearing a concerto by Mendelssohn—or any composer—thus implies hearing it with reference to other musical works of the same (or similar) genre, either from its own time or from before. Understanding a concerto thus requires knowing its specific musical contexts, since the piece “exists” within a large but finite milieu of musical practices; i.e., a plethora of compositional paradigms by different composers, linked by their mutual musical inclinations. On these grounds, this dissertation aims to explain early-nineteenth-century concerto form from a holistic perspective, focusing on Mendelssohn’s works as well as the compositional practices of various other composers. For this reason, my present theoretical approach relies on a wide-ranging, empirical evaluation of the concerto movements of this time, in order to 1) determine the specific formal features germane to the early-Romantic concerto practice and 2) set them within a theoretical framework that can account for their precedents.