Mm. 1–8 confront us with three stop-and-go gestures. Two blunt, forte chords, I and V6 in E minor, set these bars into motion, with the upper voice leaping a fifth upward, E5-B5—two imposing jolts of sound set into relief against a backdrop of silence.3Close This is a fatalistic, space-opening gesture, positing the grim E-minor chord as a premise, breaking it open onto its dominant and releasing it through m. 2’s expectant emptiness into the world of all that is to follow. Such annunciatory gestures recall precedents in Haydn (see chapter 6), though Daverio, reflecting on the quasi-symphonic character of the op. 59s, also hears echoes of the Eroica: “a pair of hammerstrokes with a [contrasting] cantabile response” (2000, 155). By contrast, Hatten regards m. 1 topically as a recitative cue, recalling an analogous opening to the “Tempest” Piano Sonata in D minor, op. 31 no. 2 (1994, 180–83).

As often in Beethoven, the coda has specific things to accomplish beyond merely rounding off an already satisfactory sonata. And it requires more than just a few bars to accomplish them. Now on the other side of the sonata, the coda’s main task is to produce what was lacking in the recapitulation: an unequivocal PAC in either E major or E minor. As we enter the coda, we don’t know which it will be. This PAC will not only provide the generically expected tonal-structural closure to the piece but also, since this is a minor-mode movement, bring its narrative to a conclusion that is either emancipatory (liberated into the major, “one wins”) or fateful (still locked into the minor, “one loses”). The watchword for such a coda: be on the anticipatory lookout for that structural PAC! As a first-level default, the beginnings of codas, and particularly extended ones—discursive codas—most often return to music similar to that which had begun the development. (When the development had begun with the off-tonic P0 or P1.1, a tonic-P entry into the coda can of course also recall the opening of the piece.) In situations where the development and recapitulation had not been provided with their own repeat, such a P onset to the coda vestigially recalls that earlier practice. Here in op. 59 no. 2, with its first and second endings to the development-recapitulation complex, the impression given is that of recycling back to the musical ideas of that point yet again but varying what had occurred in the development’s initial, ruminative passages to proceed elsewhere. Since this coda begins with the rotation-initiator P0, now on C major (VI; cf. the C-major developmental breakout at m. 107), it also, like most codas, begins another rotational process, though none of the once hopefully proleptic, major-mode secondary material is permitted entry in this fatalistic, negative coda. As is obvious, mm. 210–18 recall mm. 70b–78, now sounded on different tonal levels, leading from C major (VI) to an assertive P0 sounded on the very remote G-sharp minor (♯iii, again the maximally darkened, mysterious hexatonic pole from that C major).19Close When the music drops to a reflective piano (m. 218), we enter a 10-bar, smoothly gliding passage (mm. 218–27) that features a series of chromatic/harmonic shifts with differing tonal implications, as the seesaw opening figure of P1.1 is passed back and forth between the second violin and viola. The passage is characteristic of the mature Beethoven: following a problematized recapitulation, musical “progress” is momentarily stilled in a corridor of suspense that reflects on where we have been and what the tonal/modal outcome of the whole process might be: “How will this tale end?” Follow, then, the changing tonal colors and their implications. G-sharp minor (mm. 218–20) is first inflected to E6 (via the L-operation, a 5–6 shift, m. 221). In the first of these chordal slippages, then, we get a transitory glimpse of the E-major sonority, the once-hoped-for emancipatory goal of this E-minor work, but it dissolves away from us as soon as it is touched. Reduced to the status of a local dominant (V/iv), the valedictory gleam of that E6 gives way to an A minor chord (iv, m. 222). The slippages in mm. 223–24 attempt to treat the preceding A minor as vi of C major—that C major again!—and those two bars drift off to a delicious ii65 and cadential in a gesture toward that key. But that vision, too, fades away in mm. 225–28, first back toward A minor but then, treating A minor as iv of E minor, through the telling cadential on the downbeat of m. 227, which then slides into the murk of E minor’s viio42. The recapitulation’s claim on E major is in the process of being extinguished. On that viio42, now in a hushed pianissimo, m. 228 begins another cumulative, duple-vs.-triple passage (recalling S1.5, particularly in its rhythmic configuration from the development’s first rotation, mm. 91–96, 99–106). In m. 230 Beethoven drops the cello’s pitch a half-step, which places a dominant-root, B2, under the diminished seventh. This sets off a rapid crescendo that sustains the resultant V9 of E Minor in an expansively dissonant, post-sonata wail of anguish. It peaks registrally at m. 232, fortissimo, with the completed climb to C6 in in the first violin, and proceeds to grind in the discordant pain of the V9 for several bars, becoming even more intense in mm. 236–39, where double-stops in the top three voices, jamming together the diminished-seventh pitches, C, A, F♯, and D♯ of the dominant ninth, cry out in a sonorous thickness of texture unprecedented in this movement. As Hatten observes, the telescoped pitches are no mere happenstance: “the Vm9 implied by arpeggiation in m. 4 . . . and hinted by the 6-5 voice leading in the bass in m. 12 . . . becomes the crux of an intensification in the coda” (1994, 192). In mm. 237–40 the fadeout decrescendo back to piano interrupts the stalled V9 and brings the coda’s brief first rotation to a decayed end. Now shorn of its former hopes for modal transformation, the pianissimo return of the mournful P1.3 in m. 241 begins a reactive, valedictory second rotation in medias res—no P0, P1.1, or P1.2 this time. Mm. 241–45 retrace mm. 13–17 with correspondence bars—and yet at the same time the rotational aspects of the coda remain relatable to those of the development, where P1.3 had appeared in a second-rotational process (m. 115). This time, though, m. 246 spins off to what we now realize is fated to be the inescapable denouement: an inexorable process of structural-cadence generation—call it the final capture—in E minor. Two features mark this event. The first is the double-touching of the i6 chord in mm. 247 and 249: that generic trigger for an expanded cadential progression, with the telltale 3̂-4̂-5̂ ascent in the bass. And the second is the icy chill of the Neapolitan ♮ii6 above the soundings of 4̂, recalling, of course, the “F-major” unsettling of P1.1 back at the sonata’s start, mm. 6–7. The reiterative mm. 246–47 and 248–49, crescendo, provide a double-windup to the dominant at m. 250. And finally—finally!—E minor produces its only unequivocal i:PAC in m. 251. I read m. 251, then, as the announcement of the movement’s real ESC, the more effective, terminally secured ESC that the recapitulation, striving toward the major, had proven incapable of providing. Yet even here there is one last twist of the knife. The landing on m. 251 is elided with a concluding, declarative statement of P1.1, insistently fortissimo and in octaves, mm. 251–52. (One could regard it as either a P-related displacement within the second coda rotation or the start of a new half-rotation.) While previous utterances of P1.1 had been set forth as nervously pianissimo questions—fearful apprehensions—it is now presented as the minor-mode victor. As with P1.1’s first appearance, the figure is a self-enclosed hieroglyph, sealed off within itself and at least proto-cadential. But I prefer not to regard the second beat of m. 252 as a second, reinforcing cadence that is the better choice for the ESC. Since the fortissimo P1.1 is an obvious extension of its PAC downbeat—to be heard as a single idea, a single thing—a more nuanced reading would propose that the i:PAC/ESC implication of m. 251 is extended through m. 252’s second beat. From that perspective the ESC is spread over the bars 251–52 and attains its finality only with the landing on the octave E’s on the second beat of m. 252. This ESC is not reducible to a single time-point (the downbeat of m. 251) but rather to a four-beat P1.1 figural complex spanning mm. 251–52. The remainder of the movement is given over to brief, resounding P1.1 aftershocks, an E-minor, codetta-like close to coda space.

The enhanced, double-appearance of P0 at the start of the recapitulation (mm. 139–40, 141–42, accompanied by fiercely rotary sixteenth-note figures) is locally referential not to m. 1 but rather to the development’s P0, C-major launch of its second rotation, mm. 107–8, 109–10. The onset of the recapitulation thus continues the process of reactive change and reorientation that has characterized the movement up to this point. The likely significance of the back-reference to mm. 107–10 is that Beethoven had staged the development’s Rotation 2 as though it were beginning to imagine itself as a preemptive, major-key recapitulatory effect, seizing the minor-mode P0 and recasting it into the major. As we heard, those futile C-major assertions had collapsed with the immediate fall into A minor (mm. 111–23) and with it the minor-mode capture of Rotation 2. Now, at the beginning of the recapitulation, the tonic E minor, by adopting the developmental Rotation 2’s figuration at mm. 107–10, mocks the earlier, C-major “recapitulatory” pretensions and begins the real recapitulation on its own terms. That four-bar statement made, P proceeds onward as in the exposition for several bars. Beethoven does rescore some of P1.1 and P1.2—dividing the parts differently among the four players—and he adds an extra tag in the cello to the F-major statement of P1.1 (mm. 146–48), but mm. 143–52 are still referential to mm. 3–12. At mm. 153–54 P1.3 corresponds both with mm. 13–14 (in figuration and melodic placement) and mm. 21–22 (since the sustained bass is now the tonic, not the dominant): recall that the first of these, mm. 13–14, had been in P space, while mm. 21–22 had begun TR space—which latter is now pursued here. Thus, as often happens in a recapitulation’s early stages, a P==>TR merger (or compression) is in the offing. At m. 156 the music, now recomposed, diverges from that of the exposition: the start of pre-crux alterations. The running sixteenths stick first on a reiterative figure on A minor (mm. 156–57), chromatically altered and expanded on F major, crescendo (mm. 158–60). M. 161 plugs into the fortissimo-strained, TR1.2 sequential figures, also recomposed but clearly referential to their expositional models—and now with an extra, added bar (m. 166) to provide an extra push onto the structural dominant, V of E minor, and the point of crux (m. 167 = m. 31, down a minor third and slightly varied), followed by a i:HC MC at m. 169. From the m. 167 crux onward, Beethoven had the option of simply transposing the remainder of the expositional model for the rest of the recapitulation. And for the most part, aside from a notable expansion at the beginning of the now-E-major secondary theme, this is what he did. In that expansion—a post-crux alteration—the exposition’s four “preliminary” S0 bars (mm. 35–38) are stretched into eight (mm. 171–78) through a repetition and rescoring of the cello’s triadic climb by the viola an octave higher. This is the preparatory passage where the minor mode that had ended TR turns into major. Now in the recapitulation this is not merely a major key but E major, the hoped-for {– +} transformation of the original E minor. The double length of its preparation both underscores the emergent E major’s crucial role and provides a grander climb up to the seraphically soaring S1.2 (m. 179). Following this, the remainder of the recapitulation consists of correspondence measures with occasional small variants here and there (mm. 179–209c = mm. 39–69), charged with all of the expressive complications of their model along the way. At stake is the production of an ESC, a PAC in E major securing the tonic and thereby overturning the symbolic threat posed by E minor. But just as the exposition had fallen short of unambiguously completing its cadential mission, so too does the recapitulation. The crucial moment, analogous to that of the exposition, is m. 205 (= m. 65) and the onset of what I have called the SC theme. The most curious thing about this potentially cadential moment is that the second violin’s m. 205 is no longer blank, as it had been in its m. 65 model. Now in m. 205 the preceding bar’s D♯5 indeed resolves upward to E5, and the double-stops of the preceding bar are also preserved. This bar has more of a sense of cadential completion than had its expositional model. Is this hermeneutically significant—perhaps as an even stronger cadential claim (or attempt) at this more crucial ESC spot? Be that as it may, the SC (or C) theme still proves incapable of endorsing whatever cadential implication we might wish to assign to m. 205. In the recapitulation that theme, too, falls apart under the first ending—and then again under the second ending, where the ongoing E major decays to E minor. What we have, then, is a sonata in which the E-major declaration at m. 205 is unconfirmed by what follows it. Even were we to regard m. 205 as an ESC (or sufficient ESC-effect), the process still unravels with the immediately following music. Within the generic {– +} plot of this E-minor sonata movement, the E-major goal-key has been dwelt in at some length but has not been sufficiently secured to project a successful, lasting outcome.18Close Heightening the stakes in op. 59 no. 2/i is the “extra-burden” premise of the minor-mode sonata, as outlined in chapter 8. In this quartet movement the sonata process, potentially a machine capable of converting minor into major, has been unable to secure permanently that parallel major in the recapitulation. To be sure, we have spent much recapitulatory time in E major, and this is obviously a {– +} recapitulation, but that S-zone, E-major stretch exists only as potential unless it is sealed off with a confirming PAC whose impact can be sustained. In sum, in this musical narrative—in the musical “story” implied by the modular successions in this sonata—the sway of E minor has proven to be so strong that the sonata process, though it came very close to overcoming it, has been unable to do so. Its weak attempt at an E-major ESC could not hold. In turn this means that unambiguous structural closure—the arrival of the “real” ESC—is deferred into post-sonata space (or not-sonata space), that is, into the coda, where the minor-or-major outcome of the now-completed but cadentially insufficient sonata will be determined. A note on the repeat of the development and recapitulation Elements of Sonata Theory (EST, 20–22) surveys the history of sonata-form repeat conventions from c. 1750 onward. By the time of Beethoven, the more common convention within the first movement of multimovement works was to repeat the exposition but not the development and recapitulation, although that more structurally elaborate decision, producing a more symmetrically formalized, grander structure—and retaining that aspect of its binary-form ancestors—still remained as a lower-level default option. Beethoven’s “new-path” decision in 1802 led him to experiment with the implications of various repeat options. In the three op. 59 quartets the composer adopted a variety of repeat schemes for first movements, and because he did so they must have been conscious decisions, not unreflective conventional defaults. Op 59 no. 1/i, for instance, features no repeats at all, for which Beethovenian precedents had existed in the first movements of the Violin Sonata in C Minor, op. 30 no. 2, and the Piano Sonata in F Minor, op. 57 (“Appassionata”). (Even more striking, the finale of the “Appassionata” does not repeat the exposition but does repeat the development and recapitulation.) And op. 59 no. 3/i repeats only the exposition. In the case of this E-minor quartet movement, being thrown back to repeat the entire development and recapitulation obliges us to re-experience the modal struggles and cadential failures of that broad stretch of music. Beethoven’s repeat sign indicates that this is something that he wanted us to do.

As always, the goal of a recapitulatory analysis is to compare it, bar-for-bar, with the exposition’s referential layout, noting any significant deviations from its rhetorical pattern: omitted or added measures, notable melodic variants, cadences added or suppressed—and, in the case of the minor-mode sonata, any changes in the interplay of major- and minor-mode ideas, particularly in and around the area of a potential (tonic-key) ESC.17Close In this case the {– +} exposition had been unable to produce and maintain an indisputable EEC. The two questions now are, will the recapitulation also provide us with a {– +} pattern—as usually happens by the time of Beethoven—and, more significantly, will the exposition’s cadential problems be replicated in the tonic?

Blazing ahead in a C-major sempre fortissimo, mm. 107–10 attempt to seize control of the originally minor-mode P0 fifth-motive by wrenching it once again into the major, fortified by similarly motivic, now-cascading sixteenth-note runs. Through desperate force, the narrative subject seeks to commandeer the minor-mode P0 and its rotation-initiating role in order to produce what might be read as a preemptive, quasi-recapitulatory effect on its own major-mode terms, albeit on VI of the global tonic, that is, on a perishable, non-tonic key.15Close The upheavals of its double-counterpoint repetition, with upper and lower parts exchanged (mm. 109–10) and P0’s fifth-leap now projected upward in the top voice, augment the impression of a vehemently erupted modal struggle. Qua actor in this tonal/modal drama, the minor mode parries with violence, wrestling down the asserted C major into a four-bar, still-fortissimo iteration on A minor (mm. 111–14). With that A minor now entered, a drop to pianissimo ushers in the whimperings of P1.3 with a set of correspondence bars in that key (mm. 115–20 = mm. 13–18, down a fifth or up a fourth, with only a few variants). If one has entertained the reading in which m. 107 is heard as the futile and illusory C-major-P0 start of a preemptive, off-tonic “recapitulation,” we see here that this vain “recapitulation’s” succeeding bars—the P1.3 idea—have been captured by A minor, mocking whatever corrective pretensions the C-major outburst at m. 107 might have had. This time, however, P1.3 leads to a weak iv:IAC in m. 121—the first such minor-mode cadence in the movement. It is immediately elided with a restart of P1.3, lowered now into the cello and begun with a clinging, two-bar poco ritard before slipping back into a tempo sixteenth-note runs. Apart from register and a few small variants, we start once again with four correspondence bars (mm. 121–24 = mm. 115–18 = mm. 13–16). At the end of m. 124 the running-sixteenths begin to “stick” in head-spinning, swelling crescendo reiterations, all’unisono, of a four-note figure, F-G-A-B♭ (mm. 125–26). This is still another anacrusis-buildup that blurs our entrainment with the flow by means of duple-vs.-triple metrical dissonance. In m. 127 it discharges onto B-flat, an arrival that triggers fortissimo variants of the viciously combative, sequential TR1.2 (which also maintains the ongoing rotational ordering of modules). This time the ascending-sequential pattern is different, relying on the MONTE schema, the chromatic 5–6 shift (with half-step rises in the bassline), which hoists the tonal levels up by step: from B-flat (m. 127) to C (m. 129), to D minor (m. 131), and—most tellingly—to the goal of the whole procedure, the global tonic E minor, proclaimed by outer-voices with malevolent, fortissimo glee (m. 133). With m. 133’s return to the E-minor tonic, the development’s modal struggle is finished. Prior attempts to seize a major-mode control of P0—most notably that of the vainly preemptive C major of m. 107—are vanquished. Celebrating that negative victory, the brutally malign, all’unisono link into the recapitulation proper (mm. 133–39) grinds earlier major-mode strivings under E minor’s heel and into the recapitulation proper. Harry Goldschmidt’s description of this Totentanz-like passage cannot be improved upon: a “cruel, descending unisono with true catastrophe-trills” (cited in Wiese, 2010, 180).16Close While the link’s expressive connotations could hardly be clearer, we should notice two things about it. First, it is a grotesque deformation of S1.2 (mm. 39–40). This means that the pre-MC material that had started a new rotation with P0 at m. 107 (and P1.3 at m. 115 and TR1.2 at m. 127) is followed here by a brief but important allusion to post-MC material. Thus Rotation 2 also meets the criteria for a full rotation. And second, Beethoven has presented us with the unusual situation in which the sonata process gains scale-degree 1̂ of the global tonic, E minor, in m. 133, several bars before the recapitulation, setting off a tumbling anacrusis into that subsequent rotational restart. This is not a case in which a clearly interrupted, root-position VA marks the end-point of the development.

Rotation 1 (mm. 70b–107) In both the first and second endings Beethoven suppresses the once-normative hard break more typically found at the close of expositions. He effects these suppressions by the mid-course interruptions of SC (mm. 69a–70a, 69b–71b): signs of its structural inadequacy with regard to expositional closure. In each ending the SC theme disintegrates and swerves into a restatement of P0. The second ending’s treatment of this is more radical than the first’s. Here SC’s G major collapses to G minor (m. 69b) and immediately inflates from there into E-flat major (mm. 69b–70b, the L-operation escape described in the previous chapter, Figure 8.2). The fortissimo return of the P0 idea (m. 70b) lands on startlingly remote tonal territory, with the sudden impression of a “wrong” harmonic move: E-flat major (♭I of E minor, a half-step lower than the P0 in m. 70a).11Close The immediately succeeding bars question that move and restate the P0 idea on different tonal levels. Mm. 72–77 seek a way to unravel the immediate harmonic problem (“where to now?”). Reacting to the tonal surprise in mm. 70b–71b, m. 72 drops to piano (“Really?!”) and the asserted E-flat major decays to the even more remote E-flat minor (♭i,). M. 74 enharmonically reconstrues E-flat minor as D-sharp minor in order to pivot in the direction of B minor (d♯-a♯o6, ♯iii-viio6 of B minor, minor v of the movement’s tonic). Neo-Riemannian theory would recognize B minor (m. 76) as the hexatonic pole from the preceding E-flat major (m. 71b): a chilling color-shift to a maximally “other,” much darkened and mysterious place.12Close However Beethoven himself might have accounted for it, it’s evident that he was seeking a fleeting harmonic move into a duskily brooding, estranged spot. Among its ironies is that a tonal color readily assimilable into the global tonic E minor’s orbit—B minor as minor v—is locally produced as something eerily unfamiliar. And the negative gravitational force of the minor mode reasserts itself here: B minor is affirmed, fortissimo, in m. 76 (“no escape!”) and holds its top F♯5 through the next bar, poised and ready to pursue its malign intentions. What follows is a set of pianissimo, minor-major tonal fluctuations, stagings of the musical process trying to slip free of the dysphoric minor’s grip. The terse P1.1 reappears on B minor in mm. 78–79 with a deceptive move at its end onto a G major chord (VI). That G is then interpreted as V of C minor for a restatement of P1.1 a half step higher, mm. 81–82 (recalling the half-step dislocation from mm. 6–7), now with a deceptive move onto an A-flat major chord (VI). Beethoven then briefly sustains this A-flat major as a muted and mysterious dream-space, far afield from the movement’s original E-minor tonic (indeed, the hexatonic pole of the global E minor). As if seeking temporary refuge on that tonal color, a hushed, P1.1-based, fantasy-thematic sentence starts to glide forward in mm. 83–84, 85–86 (2+2, αα‎′)—a berceuse-like “if only!” But the A-flat major cannot last. In mm. 87–90 the continuation descends to the held-breath dominant of B-flat minor, a key a tritone away from E minor. The nervous chromatic/enharmonic adjustments of mm. 91–96 serve as a corrective, lifting the brief dominant pedal of B-flat minor (mm. 88–90) onto that of B minor. At the same time, mm. 91–96’s duple-vs.-triple dislocations and urgent crescendo—intensified through two scrapingly harsh bars of V9 of B minor—recall the similar role of the exposition’s S1.5 (mm. 58–64, although here the moment of apparent arrival, m. 97’s , is given an ominous, negative accent via a sudden drop back to piano). At this point we see that the musical material of the development so far has touched upon both pre-MC and post-MC material, our touchstone criterion for identifying a fully rotational handling of previous thematic ideas. As this passage proceeds, it becomes clear that mm. 97–106 are a complementary but recast variant of mm. 89–96, now lifting the music out of the minor-mode shadows and onto a resonantly proclaimed, fortissimo C major (m. 107, VI of E minor; globally construed, C-major can be read as the L-operation, “inflation-escape” key from E minor) and a contrapuntally treated variant of P0—the start of a new rotation.13Close The m. 65 question returns here: Is m. 107 a VI:PAC? Since cadential evasions and (far less often) realizations are central to this movement’s narrative, this is no idle question. As with many such situations, it depends on one’s definitions, and again it might be decided either way. Recall that, under one interpretation, the quasi-parallel moment of the exposition, m. 65, might not be regarded as a PAC but rather as the landing-point of an extended anacrusis. Do we have the same situation at m. 107? We might also remember that form-functional theory, with its strict criteria, is reluctant to call such a tonic arrival a PAC unless the V that precedes it is first sounded in root position,14Close and here the full V7 of C is generated rung-by-rung in the descending bassline, F♮3, D3, B2, G2, mm. 103–6. By those lights one can readily hear mm. 99–106 as another extended anacrusis to the strong downbeat at m. 107. This reading recognizes m. 107 as a forceful, new-tonic declaration but would filter that observation into the movement’s generally non-cadential frustrations: a major mode asserted but not secured. On the other hand, there is no denying that the tonic-landing on m. 107 is stronger than that of m. 65: here we have 8̂ in the upper voice and a more firmly placed root in the bass. Those considerations might lead one to regard m. 107 as an elided VI:PAC, though the C major at hand is only transiently generated and soon decays: a red-hot burst of hopeful assertion.

Since mm. 35–39 hold onto the dominant harmony from the end of TR, what we find is a blurred entry into S-space. As a result, commentators have differed about where the secondary theme begins.6Close This problem can occur when S-themes start on or over the dominant, following an HC:MC in the key of S. Sonata Theory regards such an opening as one type of S0  (S-zero) or S1.0  theme: a new melodic idea, usually with a clear initiating function, but a theme that, at its opening, “retains the MC’s active dominant, which continues to ring through the succeeding music as momentarily fixed or immobile . . . [rather like] a prolongation of the caesura-dominant itself” (EST, 142–43). Emerging out of the low-register darkness and directed forward by the now diatonically inflected wobble in the viola, D3-C♮3, the cello opens the exposition’s part 2 in m. 35 with S0. It begins with a triadic climb on the sustained dominant, D2-F♯2-A2 (5̂-7̂-2̂), mm. 35–36, releasing the preceding G minor into G major with the B♮ upper-neighbor at the end of m. 35. At the same time, it reanimates the cello’s dotted-eighth-and-three-sixteenths rhythm from mm. 31–32 (traceable back to the P1.3 melody in mm. 13–17), the task of whose pulsations is always to flow into the succeeding bar: it will recur throughout much of S. Recalling Adorno’s suggestion that this movement may be heard “as the [unfolding] history of the opening fifth,” we may be invited to hear a relationship between the D-F♯-A opening of S0 and the blunt fifth-leap of P0. As we shall observe, other aspects of the subsequent S-theme also suggest back-references to P, continuing the sense of this music as enacting a process of ramification and becoming. As so often in Beethoven, it is possible to hear S as an imaginative recasting of several of P’s characteristic features: the principle, once again, of contrasting derivation. If one wishes to underscore this point, it is possible, with due cautionary nuances, to suggest that a new subrotation begins at m. 35. But to claim, with Adorno, that our task must be to show the “mediated identity” of P and S (my italics) is an ideologically grounded step too far (1998, 13). The cello’s D2-F♯2-A2 is answered three octaves higher and in retrograde by the first violin, A5-F♯5-D5, mm. 36–37. Continuing the process of S-emergence in the manner of a question or proposal, the cello climbs higher on the rungs of the V7/III chord, F♯2-A2-C3, mm. 37–38. The first violin responds with a reply that floats upward into the highest available register, sweeping the fog away into a patch of momentarily confident serenity, gliding along with the now-rolling meter. Triggered by the I6 chord in m. 39 (reckoning now in G major), the seraphic mm. 39–40, with fluttering inner voices, sound a complete cadential progression and produce a seemingly trouble-free III:IAC on the second beat of m. 40. Mm. 35–40 can be grouped as a compressed, six-bar sentential phrase. Even while they prolong a V7 harmony, mm. 35–36 and 37–38 suggest the onset of a rhetorical presentation (2+2, αα‎′). In this case, Beethoven omits the usual continuation idea (β‎) and proceeds immediately to the S1.2 cadential unit (γ‎). Let’s call the presentation, mm. 35–38, S1.1 (S0==>S1.1) and attach the designator S1.2 to the cadence, mm. 39–40.7Close Grasping the import of this six-bar phrase, mm. 35–40, is critical to understanding all that follows in the exposition. Recall the menacing E-minor threat from P, remembering also that no E-minor PAC had been sounded in that zone: that chilling seal of negativity had been pushed aside, repressed in m. 19. The point now, in S, is to secure a major-mode III:PAC with the hope of resolving it into a I:PAC in the parallel spot of the recapitulation, whereby the mechanics of the sonata process would overturn the initial E minor into E major. While by no means providing terminal closure, sounding the serene, G-major IAC in m. 40 is the first step of this attempt. It could be understood, for instance, as a six-bar antecedent, naïvely hoping for a consequent. But no consequent follows it. Instead, mm. 41 backs up to sound a variant of m. 39, a phrase-extension seeking to replicate the III:IAC with the melody now in the second violin. Near the cadential moment, m. 42, the predicted cadence falls apart on an f♯o7 chord (viio7, with the cello also shifting momentarily into a higher register), slipping onto V65 at the end of the bar. Nonetheless, gliding along on the metrical rails, the sense of local serenity spins onward in mm. 43–45, S1.3, piano and dolce. These bars constitute another, similar cadential unit, I-ii6-V(7)-I, producing a second III:IAC at the downbeat of m. 45, again with B5 in the topmost voice. As before, the IAC is not allowed to settle, but is immediately subjected to a variant of S1.3', mm. 45–46 (= mm. 43–44). This time the potential IAC-effect in m. 47 is softened through melodic diminution, and instead the tonic chord on m. 47 starts the gentle push of yet another cadential progression, mm. 47–48, this time clearly headed for a desired III:PAC downbeat and the hoped-for structural closure in 49. More than that, the V65/V in the second half of m. 47 and, above all, the melodic descent in the first violin in m. 48 (6̂-1̂-3̂-2̂) recall and transpose m. 18 from P—the E-minor cadential moment whose seemingly inevitable i:PAC had been subverted. And similarly, Beethoven subverts the predicted G-major cadence in m. 49 with an unexpected forte, f#o42—enharmonically the same diminished seventh that had thwarted the E-minor cadence in m. 19. By now it has become clear that sounding that III:PAC (EEC) is not going to be an easy task. For all of its dolce serenity up to this point, S is now running the risk of being reduced to a string of failed cadential modules. The diminished-seventh bluster of mm. 49–50, S1.4, not only blocks the expected III:PAC but also assumes the role of a two-bar anacrusis: a new, energetic windup gathering up strength to throw off a hopefully more secure approach to the anticipated structural cadence. Once again, the procedure in play—backing up to restate or refashion an earlier, unsuccessful cadential module—is the familiar “one-more-time technique” (Schmalfeldt 1992). Its first release, with the viola now in the upper voice, is in mm. 51–52, an S1.3 variant now falling, with the viola’s 6̂-5̂-4̂-3̂-2̂-(1̂) descent, toward a promised III:PAC. But again the cadence is blocked by an even more emphatic intervention of the S1.4 anacrusis-windup, mm. 53–54, expanding outward in an aggressively strenuous wedge. This opens onto a climactic cadential in m. 55, with registral extremes in the outer voices.8Close At this point the S zone’s “one-more-time” strategy changes. With the F♮6 in the first violin, m. 55, we abandon the quest for a straightforward cadential module. The three bars of mm. 55–57—at first a near-gravityless hovering, then a dolce, rapid plunging down to earth—close the wide-open wedge and signal a preparation for something new. They land on the downbeat of m. 58, where something different starts to generate. Call it S1.5: a more decisive buildup, begun in a hushed, secretive pianissimo: reculer pour mieux sauter. If the soaring mm. 55–57 had struck us as a metrical expansion, unpinning our entrainment with the previously smooth-flowing meter, the chromatic mm. 58–64 give us a different sense of metrical compression or disruption. The off-kilter rhythms and tied eighth notes set the notated meter into conflict with what soon locks into an implicit displaced from the barline by a half-beat: a metrically offset hemiola. While anticipated in m. 58, this becomes clearly apparent by m. 59, where the “misaligned ” implications are more securely established with the second eighth note of the bar. Their metrical-clash tuggings, which Kerman characterized as “nervous . . . twitchy syncopation” (1966, 126), are unmistakable in the buildup occupying mm. 60–64. Reinforcing the edgy tension of mm. 58–64 are the chromatic bass-line windings around the ever-strengthening dominant (notice the potent augmented-sixth approach to the in mm. 62–63) and the inexorable homophonic crescendo. By m. 64 the now-supercharged V7 is sounded forte, with ringing double-stops in the upper three parts. The import of all this could not be clearer: the drawing-back of the tensest possible bowstring in preparation for a potent downbeat-release. The arrow is shot forth with the sforzando tonic chord in m. 65, elided with and setting off a new, decisive thematic module. Notice also how Beethoven enhances m. 65’s shooting-forth through a foreshortening of the last of the metrically displaced “” implications by an eighth note. Thus the ensemble’s final bow-stroke in m. 64, marked staccato, becomes the trigger-moment that snaps the off-kilter syncopations back into realignment with the notated barlines, restoring our entrainment with meter. We now confront the most analytically challenging moment of the exposition, one that will shape any larger interpretive reading that we have of the movement. M. 65 is certainly a point of strong tonic arrival: G major rings out with celebratory flourishes, and it is emphatically prepared by a preceding V7. But does it qualify as a structural cadence? For Sonata Theory the question matters, since one of its central concerns is to attend to the manner of attaining, or not attaining, the generically mandated, non-tonic PAC near the end of any exposition: the completion of the essential expositional trajectory with the cadential production of the EEC. For all of the sense of euphoric arrival at m. 65, the notational evidence on behalf of an unassailably secured structural cadence is not complete, leaving open the possibility for two different understandings of this moment. In such cases Sonata Theory’s maxim is to explicate the ambiguities rather than to insist upon only one right way to understand the situation. Why might one hesitate before endorsing m. 65 as a structural cadence? What I’ll call Reading 1 draws attention to its cadential complications. Here at the downbeat of m. 65 we first notice that the topmost voice is on 5̂, D6, setting off an arpeggio cascade down to another 5̂, D4. From that perspective m. 65 might heard as a III:IAC, not a III:PAC,9Close and that accented high D6 continues to ring through mm. 65–68 as if sustained or frozen in that register. Moreover, at m. 65 Beethoven silences the second violin for two blank bars: its valenced leading-tone in m. 64, F♯5, is kept from its predicted resolution onto G5. Why? (As we shall see, in the parallel passage in the recapitulation this does not happen.) To be sure, the sforzando kickoff to the new thematic idea is forcefully accented, but the m. 65 reduction from the preceding double-stop thickness to a three-part texture is at least worthy of our notice. We might also observe that in m. 65 the downbeat G2 in the cello is of the briefest possible duration, and the vigorous G2-D2 alternation in the cello keeps the D2 dominant of mm. 63–64 in play through m. 68, albeit on metrically weak offbeats. This means that the thematic bolt shot forth in mm. 65–68 is registrally framed by a quasi-sustained D6 on the top and D2 on the bottom: the theme is encased within 5̂ above and 5̂ below. To what degree does all this undercut, or at least attenuate, the impression of a structural cadence? Or, in extreme versions of Reading 1, is it conceivable to hear m. 65 as anything other than a cadence? The alternative would be to hear S1.5, mm. 58–64, less as a cadential-function module than as a broad anacrusis that lands squarely on the tonic at m. 65 to set free a fresh, resolute thematic idea. (As noted in chapter 4, the music preceding elided PACs or PAC-effects, particularly when the thematic material of the cadential downbeat is vectored determinedly forward, can often take on the additional, preparatory function of an extended anacrusis, released at the point of tonic arrival.) But what would such a reading suggest? M. 65 surely marks an attainment of some sort. But it may be that m. 65’s G major is insisted upon by a dogged force of will, not attained by a problem-free cadence: a hyper-strong downbeat prepared by a metrically conflicted, seven-bar anacrusis in mm. 58–64.10Close “If G major cannot be secured with an unequivocal cadence—if there is no literal PAC—we will at least proclaim G major to be sufficiently attained by fiat. Plant the flag with fortitude even though the territory is not yet fully conquered.” This would mean that m. 65 falls short of being read as an EEC. And yet for all of these complications most listeners would probably find it more intuitive to hear an implicit cadential arrival at m. 65, especially in the immediate secondary-theme context of repeated cadential frustration through the several preceding “one-more-time” blockages, which are generically common toward the ends of secondary-theme zones. Those favoring a (quasi-) cadential understanding of m. 65—call it Reading 2—might suggest that the “PAC” resolution of the preceding V7 is something to be conceptually understood, even though upon examination it is not literally present: the forceful, sforzando elision of the newly released theme blots the implicit PAC out of audibility. Listeners, the argument might go, will hear a PAC-effect at m. 65 even though a check of the notation does not provide the written evidence for one. Such a PAC-effect, in turn, could be understood as providing at least a locally credible EEC-effect. Within the flexibilities afforded by Sonata Theory practice, the argument would be that, given the strength of the m. 65 arrival and the manner in which it is prepared, it could be considered a deformational EEC—a contextually practical substitute for it—seeking to ground the G-major tonic by assertion, that is, by means other than the prototypically normative cadence. In sum, Reading 1 (no structural cadence) argues that the generically expected III:PAC is so compromised at m. 65 that we should not conclude that the EEC has been satisfactorily accomplished. Reading 2 (implicit cadence-effect) allows for a sufficient EEC-effect via a cadentially attenuated but practicable stand-in for the EEC. Is it obligatory to choose either the one way or the other? Or might it be, in the reading that I prefer, that Beethoven has purposely composed these ambiguities into mm. 58–65 in order to unsettle our confidence in what, now mulling over the matter two centuries later, Sonata Theory regards as a normatively secured EEC? Perhaps the point is precisely that of its almost-ness, its combination of yes-and-no features, both of which play into the dramatic staging of the movement’s larger {– +} drama of modal reversal or non-reversal. Any such conclusion would have to be a central part of one’s hermeneutic reading of the movement. What then do we make of the theme that begins in m. 65? Should we think of it as a closing theme (post-EEC) or not? It may sound like a characteristic C theme, or a C theme that could have been, but, again, the confidence of its C-status can be called into question through the multiple attenuations of the PAC-effect at m. 65. How to resolve this question? As I have also noted in chapter 5’s discussion of the first movement of Haydn’s “Military” Symphony, Sonata Theory refers to such a thing as an SC  theme: “the presence of a theme literally in precedential, S-space that in other respects sounds as though it is more characteristically a closing theme.” This kind of theme seems “to bestride both the S- and C-concepts” (EST, 190–91). While regarding m. 65 as self-evidently precadential is a step too far, my preference is to call this an SC theme, if only to remind myself of the problems surrounding the m. 65 moment. If you are convinced by the EEC-effect at m. 65 and wish to regard the new theme as C, that’s also fine: substitute your C for my SC in what follows. In most cases SC themes will lead to a clearer production of an EEC (and C themes will normally confirm the EEC with one or more cadences). That’s not the case here. This SC (or C) theme starts out as a confident sentence, with presentation αα‎′ (mm. 65–66, 67–68), but the sentence is cut short in m. 69a. Its bluff bravado is redirected elsewhere; the theme is cut off at the knees. (The brutality of the truncation is not adequately captured by the benign connotation of the word “retransition,” RT.) Even if we have considered m. 65 to mark a sufficient EEC, that G-major confidence cannot be reaffirmed with closing material. This leaves the exposition cadentially open. Under these circumstances m. 65’s “EEC-effect” is at best left undersecured and uncertain. And with SC’s inadequacy now demonstrated, m. 70a brings back the malevolent E minor with a vengeance. We are thrown back to m. 1 and the repeat of the exposition. In sum, this {– +} exposition (E minor, G major, i-III) has produced at best a tenuous EEC-effect, one that has proved unable to be confirmed—and in fact is lost—in the brief music that follows, producing a non-closed exposition. Given m. 65’s ambiguity, I suggest that this movement is at least in dialogue with the concept of what Sonata Theory calls a failed exposition, not at all in the sense that Beethoven has composed it poorly but rather in the sense that he has staged a musical drama of cadential ambiguity (an EEC almost but perhaps not quite attained) within an exposition that, by its end, is left open. The expositional tale told here is one in which the major mode (III), while very much present, has proven unable to produce and maintain an unequivocal, major-mode PAC close. In turn this means that the expositional hope of producing an unequivocal I:PAC/ESC in the recapitulation is cast into doubt. On the other hand, we should remember that there have also been no E-minor PACs in the exposition. A bitter struggle is brewing. But before getting to the recapitulation, we have to pass through the trials of the development. Development (mm. 70b–138) Rotation 1 (mm. 70b–107) In both the first and second endings Beethoven suppress

In m. 21 Beethoven returns to P1.3, the pathotype-saturated module from m. 13, only now over a tonic pedal, not a dominant pedal, and with some parts exchanged. In the first two bars what had been in the viola is now placed on top, two octaves higher, in the first violin, while m. 13’s upper-voice melody is pushed down an octave into the second violin. With this double-counterpoint variant of the beginning of P1.3 (mm. 21–24 return referentially to mm. 13–16) the music backs up to reapproach, and potentially this time to be captured by, the thwarted E-minor cadence, that sign of sinister finality from which the narrative subject is struggling to wrest free. In m. 25 the composer continues the octave-doubled runs, swerving away from the P1.3 model and fleeing upward, crescendo, into a new and obviously TR-oriented fortissimo module in m. 26. It is only at this point that we realize that we are in the transition zone. What we had first heard as a variant of P1.3 (m. 21, still potentially in the P-zone) can now be regrasped as TR1.1 (P1.3==>TR1.1). (This zone is in dialogue with the TR of the repeated cadential-unit type, the oddity here being that the cadence in question had been emphatically blocked at the end of P.) The new, sequential material that starts in m. 26 can now be construed as TR1.2. The strenuous TR1.2 unfolds as a high-energy, three-stage process that suggests how forceful the struggle must be to pull oneself away from the gravitational power of, at least, this E minor—and of the minor mode itself. Having now climbed all the way to F♮6, the first gesture of TR1.2 (mm. 26–27) bursts into fortissimo four-part harmony on V7/c (minor? [given that preceding A♭2]; or possibly major?), with furious tremolos shuddering through the three lower voices. When the high F6 plunges over two octaves downward in its resolution to E♭4 (m. 27)—like a wrestler hurling a combatant down onto the mat—whatever hope we might have had of a local escape to “C major” collapses to C minor. A modified sequence (mm. 28–29) then wrenches us to the tonal level to G minor; and a third (mm. 30–31), deploying an augmented sixth, produces a half cadence over a D bass, locally V of G minor. The struggle away from E minor has proceeded by rising fifths, c, g, and D, this last as a dominant chord, V/iii. This is the proper dominant for the G-major S that will follow, albeit here in the parallel minor, as we so often find in the closing stages of TR. The dominant is now locked onto, while melodic lines swirl above into the iii:HC MC in m. 33. M. 34 is a bar of caesura-fill (CF), sustaining the low D2 in the cello, with the viola wobbling an octave above it. This dissipates the accumulated energy in a stark decrescendo and links the end of TR to the beginning of S. The CF’s dynamic pullback reins in the previously forward-vectored activity and drops the register down to the low D2 in the cello, creating a mid-expositional gap: a dark-pit emptiness that permits the second part of the exposition to emerge and develop on its own terms.

At m. 13 P1.2 releases onto a new melodic grouping, P1.3 (γ‎). Over a static dominant, its first two bars, the repetitive mm. 13–14, register a whimpering recognition of being caught in the toils of a malicious E minor. At the same time they initiate a slide toward forward motion through a combination of means: a reintroduction of sixteenth-note motion; a more perceptible entrainment with the sinuously gliding meter; a melodically shaped, downward tending upper voice; and a sense of uneasy hesitancy provided by a single sigh, swelling dynamically onto the second beat, and its enriched restatement. Also central to these two measures’ affect of pathos is their dividing of the pathotype figure among the three upper string parts: E5 and D#5 in the first violin and C4 and B4 in the second violin, doubled an octave lower in the viola. The troubled windups of mm. 13–14 flow into a stream of sixteenth notes whose initial i-iv motion (m. 15) signals the onset of an expanded cadential module. The running sixteenths not only disrupt our entrainment with the meter—an anxiety-riddled unsettling—but also suggest a sweeping acceleration toward what is expected to be a fatalistic E-minor cadence: we are being pulled into its darkness. With these octave-doubled runs Beethoven expands the predominant harmony, stretching it from the second beat of m. 15 through the first beat of m. 18 (viio7/V). In mm. 15–17 he mutates the progression-initiating A-minor chord to an implicit F-major one: the more spectral ♭II6, mm. 16–17, to be construed over a still-understood but not literally present A2 bass. The F♮ intruder recalls the Neapolitan swerve of mm. 6–7. In m. 18 the crescendo swell onto E minor’s dominant, coupled with the 3̂-2̂ descent in the melody, brings us to the brink of the inevitable. In a desperate refusal to submit, the cadence is subverted (m. 19) onto a viio42-V6 return to the forte P0 chords from m. 1 and the blank silence of m. 2. (At the same time, in mm. 18–20 the cello’s B2-C3-D♯2 motion recalls touches on three of the four pitches of the pathotype figure. The fourth pitch, E3, will be supplied in m. 21.) As we soon find out, with that clipped abruptness the P-zone arrives at a non-normative end. In a mere 20 bars, Beethoven has led us through a concentrated process that remains disturbingly unsettled at its end. From the Sonata Theory point of view we notice, first, that there is no tonic cadence in P: we thus refer to the tonic in this first zone as underdetermined (not secured with a i:PAC; EST, 73–74). (In fact, we shall see that there is no unequivocal i:PAC until the coda.) And second, we have a deformational situation in which the P-zone is not closed with a cadence but remains hanging open on that V6 chord. It is only in retrospect, once we have proceeded into an unmistakable TR, that we can conclude that that P’s termination has been rhetorical, not cadential in the more normative manner.

When gauged against normative thematic prototypes, how are we to construe the shape of what we have heard so far? And where will the music proceed from here? P1.1, mm. 3–8, has given us a cryptic musical idea and its out-of-tonic transposed repetition. From one perspective this can suggest an allusion to the two presentation modules of a sentence (αα‎′), though the harmonic plan and interpolated rests measure this music’s distance from any normative model. This is my preferred reading, but nuance is everything. The point is to underscore what is exceptional about these bars, not to neutralize them by affixing onto them a label from a prefabricated analytical category. Applying the concept of dialogic form at the presentational level, mm. 3–8 could be heard as starting something deformationally “sentential” by means of a disjointed dialogue with the initiation function of a prototypical presentation. At the same time, their impression is that of a pair of reactive modules—looking both backward and forward—that also begin a process of germination that continues into the exposition as a whole. What follows is the deformational presentation’s expanded continuation. It begins with what I call P1.2 (β‎, mm. 9–12), pursuing the process of motivic ramification in obvious ways. Here the motivic shapes set forth in mm. 3–8 are worried through in a patch of furrowed-brow anxiety. P1.2 couples its sense of preparatory oscillation—two complementary diminished-seventh blurs, each leaning into a dominant seventh—with the rhetorically repetitive aspect of a new presentation: the a sentential, 2+2, αα‎′, subgrouping under β‎ is self-evident. (Sentential continuations—internal portions of larger sentence chains or nested sentences—are not uncommon. They can, as here, have both a continuational function—“being-in-the-middle” via fragmentation and other characteristics—and a quasi-presentational function, leading to their own continuations.) P1.2 is reactive to mm. 3–8 in still another sense. It advances the sense of disorientation by ratcheting up the tension of an ongoing upper-voice ascent. That ascent had begun in P1.1, with the B4 in m. 3, the C5 in mm. 4 and 6, and the D5 in m. 7. Now in P1.2 the pressure rises to D♯5, and F♯5 in mm. 9–10 and finally peaks on A5 in mm. 11–12, with some of the key pitches stung by sforzando accents.

The larger question with regard to the opening of op. 59 no. 2, though, is: how are we to understand it? In a provocative reading of mm. 1–8, Gerd Indorf suggested that the blunt m. 1 chords might be heard as reopening the emphatic F-major cadential closure that had concluded the preceding quartet (Figure 9.2)—only now sounded a half-step lower (2004, 269–70). If we entertain this as a viable reading, two entailments follow. First, this would mean that the connotations of this quartet’s opening reach beyond the boundaries of this individual piece, inviting us to read into it a linear continuity proceeding from the preceding work. By these lights, op. 59 no. 2 could be construed as a contrasting centerpiece of a quasi-narratively ongoing triptych. Second, the F-major Neapolitan gesture in mm. 6–7 might be heard as a backward-looking gesture to this quartet’s predecessor, either asking us to reflect on where we had been at the end of the prior quartet or perhaps, urging us to feel the continued pull of its F-major tonic on the opening of this very different work.

If all this were not strange enough, mm. 6–7 reiterate mm. 3–4 a half-step higher, on the Neapolitan F major. This notches up the impression of reactive puzzlement. P-theme tonal swerves are a familiar feature of Beethoven’s “new-path” style, as in the openings of the Piano Sonatas op. 31 nos. 1 and 2 (“Tempest”) and op. 53 (“Waldstein”). And as all commentators observe, this was not the first time that Beethoven had begun a sonata’s first movement by immediately juxtaposing a brief, tonic-minor idea with its immediate repetition on ♭II. Its predecessor had been the F-minor Piano Sonata, op. 57 (“Appassionata”), from a year or two earlier. (Op. 57’s finale had also swerved briefly onto the Neapolitan midway through its initial sentence.) A few years later he would revisit the effect with the clipped opening of the op. 95 quartet (“Serioso”).

What follows, mm. 3–4, is a wispy, pianissimo response to those opening chords—call it P1.1—tiptoeing further into musical space: a metaphorical question mark querying what m. 1 might imply.4Close M. 1’s opening fifth recurs as an E4-B4 frame in m. 3, and m. 4 drops to B3 and rises back to E4: a modest melodic unfolding of the first bar’s motivic kernel.5Close This is a touchstone example of a reactive module, one responding to what has just happened, even as it also suggests the onset of a process of “organic” germination forward in linear time. (Ever-insistent on form as process, Adorno jotted a note to himself urging “the analysis of [this] first movement . . . as the [unfolding] history of the opening fifth” [1998, 13]). In this first serpentine melodic sprouting, mm. 3–4, we also recognize the enframing outline of the minor-mode pathotype figure: E4-B4 [and B3]-C5-D♯4. Additionally, the harmonic i-V9/7-i sway outlines a brief opening gesture followed by an immediate close. Perhaps recalling some of Haydn’s string quartets that begin with an epigrammatic closing figure, Beethoven gives us a terse acknowledgment of E minor by means of a fragment of cadential content isolated from a true cadential function. Nothing is closed or completed here. On the contrary, self-enclosed and sealed off by silence on each side, the “cadence” is posited as a brute sonic fact: a opening idea to be elaborated upon in what follows.

As discussed in chapter 6, for Sonata Theory such pre-thematic starters raise the question, is this a brief, in-tempo introduction (not part of the sonata proper) or a P0 idea that launches P-space? As always, the answer is found by determining whether it is included in the expositional repeat. At first glance, with the repeat sign following m. 1, the notation might imply that it is not, but when we turn to the exposition’s first ending, mm. 69a–70a, we see that m. 70a replicates m. 1 and cycles us back to the initial bar. Therefore—unlike the situation in Haydn’s Quartet, op. 76 no. 1 and Beethoven’s Eroica but like the situation in the Fifth Symphony to come—m. 1 is a P0 module. It is part of the sonata proper, an essential part of its argument. This will also be confirmed through its presence in the development and at the onsets of the recapitulation and coda.