Kelvin H. F. Lee

This article addresses the issue with the ambivalent relationship between form and content in fin-de-siècle symphonic poems. It elucidates the post-Wagnerian symphonic poem’s absolute and programmatic concerns as the two coordinates of an integrated structural logic, by exploring the applicability of Fred Lerdahl’s idea of tonal/narrative path in a sonata environment informed by Steven Vande Moortele’s theory of two-dimensional sonata form, mindful of the post-Romantic tonal practice construed in terms of Richard Cohn’s concepts of double syntax and hexatonic cycles. Through a case study of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5 (1902–1903), I posit a model of dialectical form by reimagining the tension between absolute and programme, symphony and drama, and sonata design and extended tonality as a dialectical discourse housed in the formal process. Special attention is given to what I theorise as sequential dissonances, which are constituted by what I call the chord of fate and the Tristan chord: these breakthrough events culminate in a structural moment characterised by Theodor W. Adorno’s notion of Augenblick, which enables retrospective reinterpretation of the ongoing formal discourse as a sonata process, engendering a reconceptualisation of the global formal and tonal syntax that concurrently has significant programmatic implications. This approach thereby gives equal consideration to the formal and programmatic properties of the symphonic poem, acknowledging its status as a distinctive genre that has its origins in both the symphony and the drama.