How to make the dominant preparation less boring?

Question

This is one thing that I have always noticed when I compose a sonata. Even if I can get through most of the development section in sonata form, the dominant preparation sort of grinds my gears. I'm like "I need to stay on the dominant and add tension, but not too long obviously. It could easily become boring. Or worse, I end up using a diminished chord and it doesn't want to resolve to the tonic." Since I am composing a sonata in Bb, the dominant is F. I have a theme in the exposition in the key of F. So how can I make the dominant preparation not so boring? After all, the sonata I am composing is one in Mozart's style. If I were composing a Beethoven style sonata, I could potentially forgo the dominant preparation and go straight into the tonic and start the recapitulation. But if I am composing in Mozart's style, I need that dominant preparation. So how can I make the dominant preparation not boring nor ending up with a diminished chord(out of the 2 tense triads, the augmented triad I only really see in more recent music, whereas the diminished chord I see as early as Mozart and Haydn) that doesn't resolve to the tonic?

Answer 1

This is a really great question, and I have a lot of thoughts. Here are a few things that come to mind:

1. Manipulation of thematic material: augmentation, diminution, inversion, fragmentation, etc.
2. The dominant is only as boring as the listener's ear is comfortable with it. A total tonicization of the dominant key might be less interesting, for example, is modulation between varying closely related keys.
3. Diminished chords are scattered throughout music history even as far back, and rather commonly used, as Bach. Keep in mind, too, that for each diminished chord there are three possibilities of inversions, and even more possibities with open-chord voicing and omission of notes. It's only as boring as its application.
4. Here is a great summation of thematic function: http://openmusictheory.com/themeFunctions.html
5. Dynamics, articulation, and phrasing are all also factors.

I hope this is helpful, or at the very least, that I've given you some new ideas/inspiration. Compositional structure is very clear and concrete, but good compositional taste is much more subjective, and requires experimentation.