Journeys through Galant Expositions

L. POUNDIE BURSTEIN'S Journeys through Galant Expositions makes an important contribution to the field of historically informed music theory by presenting, in considerable detail, historical theories of sonata form and by proposing them as effective tools of analysis. The fact that historical theories of form, though frequently discussed, have not been routinely applied by exponents of historically informed music theory in the United States as analytical tools is ironic, given that this field has its origins in Leonard Ratner's articles (1948, 1949) in which their author rejected the thematic conception of sonata form and proposed that “in the classic era, form was conceived primarily in terms of key relationships” (1949: 163). This view of sonata form as a key-area form was included in Ratner's Classic Music (1980), where it forms the nucleus of his project “to approach the music and musical precepts of the 18th...