Cyclic form

Cyclic form is a technique of musical construction, involving multiple sections or movements, in which a theme, melody, or thematic material occurs in more than one movement as a unifying device. Sometimes a theme may occur at the beginning and end (for example, in Mendelssohn's A minor String Quartet or Brahms's Symphony No. 3); other times a theme occurs in a different guise in every part (e.g. Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, and Saint-Saëns's "Organ" Symphony).

The technique has a complex history, having fallen into disuse in the Baroque and Classical eras, but steadily increasing in use during the nineteenth century .

The Renaissance cyclic mass, which incorporates a usually well-known portion of plainsong as a cantus firmus in each of its sections, is an early use of this principle of unity in a multiple-section form . Examples can also be found in late-sixteenth- and seventeenth-century instrumental music, for instance in the canzonas, sonatas, and suites by composers such as Samuel Scheidt, in which a ground bass may recur in each movement (; ). When the movements are short enough and begin to be heard as a single entity rather than many, the boundaries begin to blur between cyclic form and variation form.

Cyclic technique is not typically found in the instrumental music of the most famous composers from the Baroque and "high classical" eras, though it may still be found in the music of such figures as Luigi Boccherini and Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (; ). It is hard to find overt instances of thematic recall between movements in Mozart, for example, and Haydn uses the technique on only a few occasions—such as at the end of the Symphony No. 31, where the music recalls the horn call heard at the very opening of the work . In sacred vocal music, on the other hand, there are some important exceptional examples, such as Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor and Mozart's Requiem and Mass in C major, K. 317 .

Although other composers were already using this technique, it is Beethoven's example that really popularised cyclic form for subsequent Romantic composers . In the Fifth Symphony, a large part of the scherzo movement is recalled to end the finale's development section and lead into the recapitulation; the Ninth Symphony's finale rapidly presents explicit reminiscences of the three preceding movements before discovering the idea that is to be its own principal theme; while both the Piano Sonata Op. 101 and Cello Sonata Op. 102 No. 2 similarly recall earlier movements before their finales.

Many composers in the nineteenth century followed Beethoven's lead. In the 1820s, both Franz Schubert and the young Felix Mendelssohn wrote numerous important cyclic works: Schubert, in the Wanderer Fantasy (1822) created a "4-in-1" double-function design that would leave its mark decades later on Liszt, while Mendelssohn, in such works as the Octet (1825) and String Quartet No. 2 (1827) created highly integrated musical forms that proved influential for later Romantic composers . Another significant model was given by Hector Berlioz in his programmatic Symphonie fantastique of 1830, whose "idée fixe" serves as a cyclic theme throughout the five movements. By the 1840s, the technique is already quite established, being found in several works by Robert Schumann, Fanny Hensel, Niels Gade, Franz Berwald, and the earliest compositions of César Franck .

Mid-century, Franz Liszt in works such as the B minor Piano Sonata (1853) did a lot to popularize the cyclic techniques of thematic transformation and double-function form established by Schubert and Berlioz. Liszt's sonata begins with a clear statement of several thematic units and each unit is extensively used and developed throughout the piece. By late in the century, cyclic form had become an extremely common principle of construction, most likely because the increasing length and complexity of multiple-movement works demanded a unifying method stronger than mere key relation. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Vincent d'Indy, a pupil of Franck, promoted the use of the term "cyclic" to describe the technique .

The term is more debatable in cases where the resemblance is less clear, such as in the works of Beethoven, who used very basic fragments. Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 is an example of cyclic form in which a theme is used throughout the symphony, but with different orchestration. The "short-short-short-long" four-note motive is embedded in each movement.

Examples

Examples of cyclic works from the classical era and afterwards are:

Joseph Haydn
Symphony No. 31: material from start of first movement recalled at the end of the finale
Symphony No. 46: material from the menuetto third movement recalled in the finale
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Sonata No. 13
Piano Sonata No. 28
Symphony No. 5: material from scherzo movement recalled in the finale
Symphony No. 9: all three movements are briefly revisited in the finale
Franz Schubert
Divertissement a la Hongroise
Wanderer Fantasy: entire piece based on thematic transformation
Piano Trio No. 2: materials from the second movement recalled in the finale
Felix Mendelssohn
Piano Sextet: material from scherzo movement recalled in the finale
Octet: material from scherzo movement recalled in the finale, plus allusions to first and second movements
Piano Sonata in E, Op. 6: opening of first movement recalled at end of finale
String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13: introduction to first movement recalled at end of finale, first movement and second movement recalled during finale.
String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 12: first movement recalled in finale
Symphony No. 3: thematic transformation across all four movements
Hector Berlioz
Symphonie Fantastique: "idée fixe" heard in all five movements
Harold in Italy: "idée fixe" heard in all four movements
Robert Schumann
Symphony No. 2
Symphony No. 4: thematic transformation across all four movements
Piano Quintet
Niels Gade
Symphony No. 1: first movement recalled in finale
Franz Liszt
Sonata in B minor
Faust Symphony
Saint-Saëns
Symphony No. 3: thematic transformation across all four movements
Cello Concerto No. 1: two key first movement themes repeated in finale
César Franck
Symphony in D minor
Violin Sonata
String Quartet
Johannes Brahms
Piano Sonata No. 1
Quartet No. 3
Symphony No. 3: The melody opening the first subject in the first movement is recalled in the codas of the first & fourth movements.
Clarinet Quintet: The melody opening the first movement is recalled just after the 5th variation in the fourth movement, but in the subdominant. The codas in the first & fourth movements are almost the same, except for how it finally closes (first movement closes with quiet B minor chords while fourth movement closes with a loud one and then a quiet one).
Bedřich Smetana
Má vlast, cycle of 6 symphonic poems: The opening from the first work Vyšehrad recalled in the second Vltava and the sixth works Blaník, shortly before the latter two end.
Anton Bruckner
Symphony No. 5
Symphony No. 8
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 4: "motto" of first movement recalled in the finale
Manfred Symphony: Material from the beginning of the first movement recalled halfway in the third movement. Material from the ending of the first movement used in the middle section of the second movement, and just before the organ sounds in the fourth movement.
Symphony No. 5: "motto" of first movement recalled in all later movements; first movement's first subject recalled in the finale
Anton Arensky
Piano Trio No. 1: Material opening the first movement recalled shortly before the finale ends. Material in the middle section from the third movement recalled halfway in the finale.
Antonín Dvořák
Symphony No. 9: the theme of the first movement returns in all four movements
Arnold Schoenberg – Violin Concerto, Op. 36
Carlos Chávez
Symphony No. 3
Symphony No. 4
Edward Elgar
Symphony No. 1: "motto" theme from the 1st movement returns in the scherzo and finale
Symphony No. 2: "motto" theme from the 1st movement returns in the slow movement and finale
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Piano Sonata No. 1
 Trio éléguiaque No. 2
Symphony No. 1
Piano Concerto No. 3
George Enescu
Chamber Symphony in E major, Op. 33
Octet for Strings in C major
Piano Quartet No. 1, Op. 16
Piano Quartet No. 2, Op. 30
Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 29
Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 24, No. 3
String Quartet No. 1, Op. 22, No. 1
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 22, No. 2
Symphony No. 1, Op. 13
Symphony No. 3, Op. 21
Symphony No. 4
Symphony No. 5
Violin Sonata No. 2, Op. 6
Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No. 1: Main opening theme reappears midway and at end of work, differently orchestrated each time
Piano Sonata No. 6: Opening from the first movement recalled in the "Andante" in the fourth movement.
Symphony No. 6: theme from first movement recalled in the finale
Vasily Kalinnikov
Symphony No. 2
Dmitri Shostakovich
Suite for 2 Pianos in F-sharp minor, Op. 6
Suite for Variety Orchestra: Material opening the March is recalled at the very end of the Finale
String Quartet No. 8: The "DSCH" motif is used in all four movements as a unifying aspect.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2)
Oboe Concerto
Symphony No. 4
Symphony No. 5
Heitor Villa-Lobos
Symphony No. 2
Symphony No. 3 (cyclic only with relation to the following Symphony No. 4)
Symphony No. 4

Sources

Further reading
 Chusid, Martin. 1964. "Schubert's Cyclic Compositions of 1824". Acta Musicologica 36, no. 1 (January–March): 37–45.
 Proksch, Bryan. 2006. "Cyclic Integration in the Instrumental Music of Haydn and Mozart." Ph.D. Diss. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
 Rosen, Charles. 1995. The Romantic Generation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
 Saffle, Michael. "Liszt's Sonata in B minor: Another Look at the 'Double Function' Question." JALS: The Journal of the American Liszt Society 11 (June): 28–39.
 Tucker, G. M., and Roger Parker. 2002. "Cyclic Form". The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
 Vande Moortele, Steven. 2009. Two-dimensional Sonata Form: Form and Cycle in Single-Movement Instrumental Works by Liszt, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Zemlinsky. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Category:Musical form