Book Review by Dr Ayla Lepine

In 1854, the Austrian music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote, ‘Unlike the architect, who has to mould the coarse and unwieldy rock, the composer reckons with the ulterior effect of past sounds.’ In the previous century, the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had observed poetically that ‘music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music’. This close relationship between sound and space, and the elegant crafting of both, is a significant element of why the sonata’s particular structure emerged as such a vital concept in modern music. Its framework is a system through which infinitely rich and emotive compositions may flow. And to quote Hanslick again, ‘Melody, unexhausted, nay, inexhaustible, is pre-eminently the source of musical beauty.’ The sonata form provided an innovative method for the emergence of new qualities of melody.

In Gillian Perrin’s wonderfully compelling, lucid, and engaging new book on the sonata, a chronological structure carries the reader across three centuries of the western musical canon, focusing on great composers including Haydn, Brahms and Schoenberg within their complex social and political contexts. As she points out, ‘Sonata form is arguably the greatest structural archetype of the western instrumental repertoire: it need not be a closed book to all but the musically-trained.’ Perrin’s approach truly opens the topic out to diverse readers, allowing the crucial ideas and motivations of these European composers to shine.

To enhance its accessibility and dynamism, Perrin’s book is supplemented by invaluable digital material. At key points in the text an audio icon indicates that the musical examples Perrin discusses are available to hear online. This process of reading and listening, going between laptop and hard copy as it were, is hugely effective, especially for the general reader. By introducing this aspect to the book’s experience, the impact of Perrin’s clarity on the subject is amplified, as is the pleasurable enjoyment of the music itself. The possible tensions between theory and practice dissolve, in an experience at times is akin to walking through a cathedral with a guidebook. We read about the various structural elements and designers, and then lift our eyes to the vaulting and stained glass, delighted by the sensation while in the company of an expert.

In her discussion of nineteenth-century composers, Perrin refers to Josef Danhauser’s 1840 painting of Franz Liszt at the piano. Liszt is surrounded by his contemporaries, including Rossini, George Sand, and Alexandre Dumas. It is a line from the latter’s book, pointed to by Sand, which has apparently inspired Liszt’s improvisation. With a marble bust of Byron watching over them, the group of musicians and writers listen contemplatively. In her account of twentieth-century composers’ explorations of the sonata, Perrin discusses Henri Matisse’s The Dance, completed in 1910. Though in a radically different style and genre, Matisse’s painting also invokes a community’s response to music. As the figures move with asymmetrical yet rhythmical energy across the surface, one in the foreground reaches to grasp the hand of the figure on the left. It is the tiny yet perceptible gap – the hand not yet grasped – that offers the viewer a unique satisfaction which would be lost if Matisse’s figures were merely dancing in a circle. It makes for a marvellous synergy with Perrin’s conclusion that the sonata gives intellectual pleasure in its ‘sophisticated use and development of theme and variation’ as well as ‘emotional satisfaction from expressive arrangements of the notes of the western scale.’

 Dr Ayla Lepine

Ahmanson Fellow in Art and Religion, The National Gallery, London

Post Views : 208