Modern Era
In the Modern period, sonata form became detached from its traditional harmonic basis. The works of Schoenberg, Debussy, Sibelius and Richard Strauss emphasized different scales other than the traditional major-minor scale and used chords that did not clearly establish tonality. It could be argued that by the 1930s, sonata form was merely a rhetorical term for any movement that stated themes, took them apart, and put them back together again. However, even composers of atonal music, such as Roger Sessions and Karl Hartmann, continued to use outlines that clearly pointed back to the practice of Beethoven and Haydn, even if the method and style were quite different. At the same time, composers such as Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, and Dmitri Shostakovich revived the idea of a sonata form by more complex and extended use of tonality.
In more recent times, Minimalism has searched for new ways to develop form, and new outlines which, again, while not being based on the same harmonic plan as the Classical sonata, are clearly related to it. An example is Aaron Jay Kernis's Symphony in Waves from the early 1990s.
Read more about this topic: History Of Sonata Form
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