ABSTRACT
Rondo forms are particularly vulnerable to having a theme excessively repeated. The more parts that a rondo has, the more susceptible it is to being dragged down by a refrain’s repetition. While current theories of Classical form recognize that composers often embellish, shorten, or even eliminate successive refrains, this paper will consider that in doing so, composers have the opportunity to energize their rondos with new methods of organization, and may even break out of a movement’s rondo underpinnings. To demonstrate this, the author will consider several movements in which later refrains are shortened or absent.
For example, the third movement of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 3 in Eb major is in sonata-rondo form. Its Refrain 1 is in rounded binary form and presents the opening theme three times. Beethoven avoids excessive repetitions of the theme by taking advantage of the first refrain’s rounded binary design, which is punctuated by three home-key PACs. Beethoven uses all three of these cadences as refrain stopping points, successively halving the length of each refrain and eliminating one PAC.
The early drafts of the second movement of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony indicate that Beethoven conceived of this movement as a five-part rondo. The form transforms during the compositional process, as a result of Beethoven shortening Refrain 2 with each consecutive draft. The author will also consider the second movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 as a case where shortening episodes destabilize and energize rondo form.
