The Off-Tonic Recapitulation in Context: a Study in Fuzziness

The double return of the principal theme and home key has long held pride of place in theories of sonata form. For James Webster (2001) it is the paramount feature of sonata form; similarly, for James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy (2006) it is the feature that lies at the heart of their sonata-theory typology, distinguishing between their types 1, 2 and 3. Several scholars have already noted that off-tonic recapitulations render this typology fuzzy, with John L. Snyder (1991, p. 53) wondering whether a subdominant recapitulation can ‘legitimately be called a recapitulation’ and, consequently, whether the movement as a whole can be truly considered a sonata-form movement. In this article I take this argument further, demonstrating that the off-tonic recapitulation is itself a fuzzy category. I discuss examples from a variety of works composed from the 1750s to the 1770s in which it is difficult to determine whether or not the recapitulation should be considered off-tonic. In some, the moment of return itself is unstable, yet not entirely off-tonic. In others, it seemingly begins on the tonic, but quickly destabilises the sense of tonal return. In yet other examples there are both tonic and off-tonic returns, with either of these holding equal stakes as to the status of the ‘true’ return (if such a status can be considered historically valid at all). I present these examples within the broader context of the gradual transformation of binary form into sonata form's ‘synthesis between binary and ternary principles’ (Webster 2001), demonstrating how the balance between these principles gradually tips over time.