Retracted Tonal Areas and the “Interrupted SK Exposition”: Circular Directionality in Early Nineteenth-Century Music: Circular Directionality in Early Nineteenth-Century Music

Recent studies have examined the specific characteristics of nineteenth-century sonata form (Schmalfeldt [2011]; Vande Moortele [2013]; Taylor [2016]; Horton [2017]; Davis [2017]; Hunt [2020]; Hyland [2023]). A distinctive feature of Romantic-era music is its new sensitivity to temporality. Concepts such as “becoming” (Schmalfeldt), “functional transformation” (Horton), “atemporal interpolation” (Davis), and “lyric form” (Hyland) have refined our understanding of formal processes that undermine or problematize the unidirectional flow of Romantic sonata-form movements. This article provides a fresh approach to a related processual phenomenon, which I term “Retracted Tonal Areas” (RTAs). RTAs are tonally distinct and structurally articulated thematic action spaces that are interpolated into one of the two main theme zones of the exposition, occupy a remote tonality, and eventually revert to the previous key. In this article, I differentiate RTA situations from other established theoretical models and focus on an RTA type that emerges within the S-zone and “interrupts” the flow of the subordinate key (SK), resulting in what I label “Interrupted SK Expositions.” Additionally, this article aims to expand the purview of investigation beyond the familiar canon. While previous studies on early-Romantic sonata expositions have primarily focused on Schubert’s music, here I contextualize his formal approach by examining it alongside works by some of his contemporaries, including Anton Reicha, Norbert Burgmüller, Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia, Franz Berwald, George Onslow, and Philip Cipriani Potter. Thus, this research offers a broader view of sonata form practices during the Romantic era.