Recent theories of formal functions and Galant schemata have sharpened our understanding of music of the long eighteenth century yet often remain relatively separate avenues of inquiry. I place these theories in dialogue by exploring their relationship within a specific repertoire and formal type, namely Haydn’s symphonies and the formal type William Caplin defines as either small ternary or minuet form depending upon its dimension and structural context, with small ternary being a theme shape that can function within a larger form while minuet form encompasses a complete structure such as a minuet or trio. Both forms are three-component designs consisting in an exposition, a contrasting middle, and a recapitulation. Haydn’s more than 100 symphonies provide a large corpus of these forms and his instantiations of them display a wide variety of compositional strategies for navigating the contrasting middle and hinging the gap between the end of the exposition and the onset of the recapitulation. Specific schemata adapted or defined by Robert Gjerdingen and other scholars are common elements in these strategies. My talk examines how schemata, singly and in combination, help blaze various formal and tonal pathways through the contrasting middle and facilitate the realization of its essential functions. I focus on how sentential structures operate within the contrasting middle—either as traditional sentence themes or as transitional or retransitional sentences—and how various schemata participate in the presentation or continuation modules of these sentence types. After defining the eight formal and tonal pathways to be discussed, I present a representative example or two for each pathway to illustrate some of the ways schemata might serve to shape them. These are not the only pathways nor the only uses of schemata in Haydn’s contrasting middles, yet examination of these pathways and the interconnection of schemata and formal functions within them brings these theoretical domains into closer communion.

This presentation aims to refine our understanding of classical medial-caesura practise. The ‘two-part exposition’, first proposed by Hepokoski and Darcy (1997) and then formalized in Elements of Sonata Theory (2006), relies on the structural cadence which organizes the medial caesura, usually a half-close in V or I. Exposing such structural cadences to Robert O. Gjerdingen’s theory of galant style (2007), however, casts illuminating new light on late-eighteenth-century repertoires and invites us to reorient our approach to the medial-caesura moment. Drawing on a corpus of 154 first-movement expositions from the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, relatively few of the medial caesurae register as genuine half-cadences (see Table 1). The ‘half-close medial caesura’ in fact features a range of cadential options, most commonly the ‘converging’ cadence and the clausula vera, which are often buttressed or furnished with a variety of galant schemata. The most common of the MC-associated schemata, the Ponte, closely corresponds with the form-functional ‘standing on the dominant’ (Caplin, 1998) and the Sonata-Theoretical ‘dominant lock’ (Hepokoski and Darcy, 2006). While this schema is the most common elaboration of these structural cadences, the Quiescenza on V of V became increasingly fashionable in the later part of the eighteenth century, and other schemata including the Prinner and even the Fenaroli (notable for its lack of closural effect) were also used. The presentation organizes the corpus into classes of medial caesura practise, and ultimately demonstrates that the half cadence is used in a minority of cases, with the clausala vera and the converging cadence both represented more strongly in the repertoire.

The application of schema theory to medial caesura practise changes the way we understand both theories, and results in a sort of negative dialectical relationship between on the one hand the kind of large-scale structural listening that became prevalent during the twentieth century and on the other hand an attentiveness to the subtle nuances of tonicization, schematic activity, and historically informed listening that has been approaching a state of maturity in the last two decades.

According to William Caplin’s theory of Classical formal functions, sonata form development sections are organized around a phrase-structural device called the “core”: a themelike unit comprising a large-scale model that is sequenced at least once (1998, 144). Joseph Haydn’s sonata forms pose a challenge to the core-centric assumption of this theory. As Caplin readily admits, “Haydn, in general, constructs his development sections without a core” (155). What formal techniques, then, are utilized in Haydn’s developments? Based on an extensive analysis of the 84 sonata-form movements from his keyboard sonatas, I have found that 60% of Haydn’s developments are structured like loose-knit expositions. Exposition-like developments allude to the intrinsic formal qualities of the central inter-thematic functions of an exposition.

This paper presents a close study of three types of exposition-like development: complete, incomplete, and continuous. A complete exposition-like development articulates a PAC in the principal development key at the end of an ST-like unit. An incomplete exposition-like development attains a medial half cadence (HC) or dominant arrival (DA) in the principal development key after a TR-like unit but does not achieve a PAC. Often, an apparent ST-like unit becomes a retransition (ST-like⇒RT). The final development type, continuous exposition-like, involves a single tonal motion from the development’s first key to the home key. Developments of this type allude to the inter-thematic functions of an exposition; however, no development key is confirmed cadentially.

In the paper, I offer two case studies of each development type. The examples highlight differences between types and within types. Regarding the former, I show how cadential evasion was a primary device Haydn used to dramatize the conceptual boundary between types. Concerning the latter, I spotlight three distinguishing devices in detail: formal fusion, MT-like unit deletion, and retrospective reinterpretation (Schmalfeldt 2011). I conclude with questions for further research on exposition-like developments in Haydn’s oeuvre and beyond.