Le Sonate per pianoforte di François-Adrien Boïeldieu: un approccio “non-viennese” alla forma sonata

At the end of the Eighteenth Century, Paris assumed a fundamental role, parallel to that of Vienna, in the development of instrumental music, resulting in the birth of the French piano school. In this contribution, I undertake an analytical investigation of the piano sonatas of François-Adrien Boïeldieu, who was one of the most important representatives of the Parisian musical milieu of that time. In particular, the main objective of this research is to explore Boïeldieu’s treatment of sonata form in the first movements of his piano sonatas, with a specific focus on his Op. 1, nos. 1 and 3. Using the principles of the theory of the formal function as a theoretical reference, I identify constant features in the author’s compositional technique, which corresponds to what classic paradigm defines as exceptional, presenting the possibility that the origins of some of these irregularities can be found in the French repertoire.