Symphonic Gift: Wagner's <i>Siegfried Idyll</i> and the Hermeneutics of Sonata Form

ABSTRACT This article reimagines the place of programmatic interpretation within the New Formenlehre through the case study of Richard Wagner's Siegfried Idyll . To theorise the interaction between form and programme, I reconcile ‘separation’ and ‘conflation’ views – as represented by Julian Horton (2020) and Lawrence Kramer (2004a) – by deploying Horton's concept of ‘technical autonomy’. Distinguishing between formal and programmatic content recontextualises how the Idyll ’s complex form shapes the work's hermeneutic intricacies. Responding to Mark Anson‐Cartwright's analyses of the Idyll , I link the work's deconstruction of sonata form to its programmatic elements. By integrating formal and programmatic approaches, I unpack how these myriad meanings unfold across the work's leitmotivic, tonal, formal and structural levels. Although the diatonic exposition conflicts with hexatonic developmental materials, their reconciliation in the recapitulation further undermines the work's tonal foundations. Wagner's multifaceted symphonic poem critically encapsulates wider nineteenth‐century formal practices, complicating ongoing debates regarding sonata typologies and the relationship between structure and form. Despite foregrounding autonomous formal discourse, this analysis problematises the relationship between form and programme. By encouraging a more nuanced approach to the symphonic poem, this dialectical account of the Siegfried Idyll ultimately elucidates the New Formenlehre ’s hermeneutic potential.