Recent interest in finale movements by Brahms and other late nineteenth-century composers has brought their unusual formal attributes to the fore. One remarkable form, associated with Brahms by James Hepokoski & Warren Darcy, is their so-called expanded Type 1 sonata. In this form, the recapitulation follows the exposition (or a brief retransition), with no intervening development division; instead, a developmental section is inserted sometime after the double return of the primary theme in the tonic key. This post-recapitulatory developmental section can be conceived in two ways: 1) as a shift of development function past the point of double return, and 2) as an expansion of the "secondary development" found in eighteenth-century sonata forms described by Charles Rosen.

That this form often occurs as a finale movement also suggests a connection to cyclicism. In a multi-movement work, typically the first movement utilizes a standard sonata form with a development before the recapitulation (a Type 3 sonata). When the finale constitutes an expanded Type 1 form, development function migrates from before the recapitulation in the first movement to after it in the finale. Indeed, many of the works with expanded Type 1 finales also exhibit other cyclic traits, such as thematic links and tonal cross-references. This paper explores the relationship of the expanded Type 1 finale with cyclical procedures in Brahms's Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8 (1854 and 1889), Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 (1862), and Dvořák's String Quartet in E Major, Op. 80 (1888).