The Expositional Rondo

This paper argues that "problematic" or "inconvenient" sonata-rondo movements lacking clear recapitulations, such as Haydn's "Clock" symphony finale, should be defined neither negatively (as a flawed or "lesser" sonata-rondo form) nor experientially (as a midstream conversion from Type 4 to rondo), but rather as descendants of the expositional rondo that originated in finales as early as the 1760s in pieces by Mozart, Joseph and Michael Haydn, J.C. Bach, and Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier St. Georges.Their first couplet-episode (AB) pair forms a sonata exposition (by Galant standards, using Burstein's (2020) recently revived Kochian terms such as Grundabstze and Quintabstze, as well as the Modulating Prinner), and then proceeds to the standard couplet-episode (AC, AD, etc.) layout until complete; the expositional materials never return.As the generic norms of their sonata forms began to take shape in the 1770s, both Mozart and Haydn began to add a section late in the pieces, perhaps to compensate for the lack of the return of expositional materials, a section I label a "balancing" section.This article proposes that the expositional rondo was not "redundant" or "lesser"-terms that have been used to describe problematic finales that defied easy identification-but rather an option that composers often utilized while sonata and rondo forms were beginning to crystallize.Furthermore, these expositional rondos will provide a fresh approach to finales in the following decades, concluding with detailed examinations of "inconvenient" finales, most notably the finales of Haydn's London Symphonies, notorious for their ambiguous formal layouts.