Between the Signposts: Thematic Interpolation and Structural Defamiliarization in Prokofiev’s Sonata Process

Abstract

This article explores the manner in which Prokofiev’s interpolation of unrelated material in the middle of a traditional theme-space ironizes a seemingly normative sonata process in the first movement of his Second Piano Sonata (1912). By serving as the motivic, tonal, and rhetorical source of much that follows, this interpolation launches a quietly subversive counternarrative that threatens to undermine the traditional sonata narrative upon which the P theme had embarked. I invoke Russian Formalist literary theory as a framework for clarifying and contextualizing the disruptive structural function of Prokofiev’s interpolations within his larger sonata text.

Second‐Order Topics and Prokofiev's String Quartets

“…Others have framed elements of Prokofiev's music in such terms, focusing on the manipulation of inherited forms to create an ironic effect (e.g. Rifkin 2009 and Perry 2020; see also Shapovalov 2004). Although I am focusing on the second‐order treatment of topics, which, in Barthes's model, does not necessary connote irony, the references are similarly defamiliarised through the omission of key elements: sufficient characteristics are present such that the topic is understood as the reference point, yet elements are distorted to interpret it as manipulated, suggesting a double voicing that is central to irony (Sheinberg 2000 and Frymoyer 2017).…”