"Double Function" Sonata Forms in Franck's Late Chamber Music

Carissa Reddick, University of Northern Colorado

While the monumentality of the first movement of Franck's String Quartet in D seems at odds with the concise first movement of his Violin Sonata in A Major (1886), both movements show a similar approach to form. Like Liszt's ground-breaking Piano Sonata in B Minor (1853), both movements by Franck exhibit "double function" forms, a term coined by William S. Newman. Unlike Liszt's sonata, however, Franck's movements do not present a multi-movement cycle within a single-movement sonata form. Instead, they present two different types of sonata form simultaneously. The first movement of the String Quartet in D presents a Type 3 sonata, defined by James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy as a standard sonata form with exposition, development, and recapitulation, concurrently with a Type 2 sonata, where the development begins with an off-tonic version of the primary theme, and the sense of recapitulation begins with the secondary theme in the tonic key. The first movement of the Violin Sonata in A Major presents a standard Type 3 sonata concurrently with a Type 1 sonata, or sonata without development. The double function in both movements depends upon the presence of late Romantic traits, such as formal fusion (defined by William Caplin as a single passage of music fulfilling more than one function simultaneously) and a reexamination of sonata-form key schemes. Franck's use of double function forms added a richness and depthclassical ideal of sonata form and revitalized the form in the late nineteenth century.