Development
Middle section of sonata form, working out the themes.
What it means
The development is the middle part of sonata form, between the exposition and the recapitulation. In it the thematic material of the exposition is worked out: broken up, altered, newly combined, and led through different keys. It is the part in which the music is farthest from its starting point.
Musical use
The characteristic procedures are those of motivic-thematic work. Themes are broken up into smaller motifs that are continued individually; motifs are sequenced, that is, repeated on other degrees; they are inverted, augmented, diminished, or combined contrapuntally with each other. Harmonically the development is unsettled: it often modulates and touches remoter keys before leading back.
At the end there is as a rule a retransition to the home key, often over an extended pedal point on the dominant, which prepares the re-entry of the main theme in the recapitulation. This spot is one of the tension peaks of the form.
The extent and weight of the development have changed over time. In early sonata movements it is often short and hardly more than a modulating transition; in the later eighteenth and in the nineteenth century it grew into the centre of the movement. Occasionally it also brings new thematic material.
The term is also used in fugue theory: there development designates a pass of the subject through all the voices, of which the first is the exposition.
Typical procedures are the splitting off of individual motifs, sequencing, the change into remote keys, contrapuntal working, and the combination of motifs of different themes. In the Viennese Classical period the development grows until with Beethoven it becomes the centre of the movement. The term also designates, in the fugue, each pass of the subject through all the voices.
Performance practice
In the development, follow which motif comes from which theme — this gives the shaping direction. Build the tension across the modulations and save the greatest emphasis for the retransition. And shape the re-entry of the home key as an arrival.