Dr. Yoel Greenberg Guest Lecture

Dr. Yoel Greenberg (Bar-Ilan University) will give a talk entitled "How Sonata Forms: A System-Oriented Approach to Sonata Form"

The revival of sonata theory in the past two decades has harnessed powerful combinations of traditional Formenlehre and modern hermeneutic and linguistic theories, to provide a newly nuanced understanding of sonata form and the limits of its definition. At the same time, in fields other than music, the importance of “self-organizing” or emergent phenomena has been increasingly recognized in a wide-ranging array of fields of human activity, from economics to technology, and from linguistic grammar to the world-wide web. Evolutionary theorists and ecologists in the past decade have realized the potential in applying their methods to cultural systems, but little has been done to this end in the study of music. In this talk I will examine sonata form as an emergent phenomenon—one whose rise was the result of a process of self-organization. Viewed this way, I demonstrate how sonata form emerges not as a convenient and stable common practice, but rather as a dynamic and inherently problematic construct, the instability of which provides an important creative stimulus to the composers who participated in its historical unfolding.

Prof. Scott Burnham (CUNY Graduate Center) will respond to the talk.

The talk will take place on Zoom.

Please contact Ms. Diana Gleiss if you would like to attend.