To characterize the compositional style of Joseph Suder that links to the tradition it is important to mention the strongly melodic element. It causes the audience to declare Suder’s music as “good-sounding/aesthetic” even though the style of Joseph Suder is essentially characterized by a highly complicated composition technique and an expressive harmony. His aim was not to force the technical and formal structures on the listeners but to appeal to them by a melodically and colorful harmonic composition. Thus Suder does not point out “problems” but he rather offers “solutions”. The principle of the “thematic synthesis” is inseparably connected with his personal style. He found this key for the formal and architectonic structure of his works in the chamber symphony of 1924.
This principle assumes a classical sonata form (consisting of the components exposition, development and recapitulation). Though it changes the recapitulation in so far as it is not (as usual) the simple repetition of the exposition but the single- initially opposing - themes or melodies transform: they approach each other in the real consonance, the contrast is getting lost. Suder modified this though multiple times and he applied it to most of his works. His aim was to let the thematic … influence the recapitulation in the sense of a development and a solution of the thematic conflicts.
In his fundamental essay “Development potentialities of the sonata form” (ca. 1942), printed in vol. 15 “Joseph Suder” of the monograph series “Composers in Bavaria” p. 53, Suder relatively late gave account to this principle which he had intuitively discovered. For the architectonic concept of his musical works were of great importance, Suder let mature his melodic though for a long time before he compositionally proceeded with it. Due to that and the fact that the pedagogic work, which he did for living, cost him a lot of money, it is explainable that the number of his works remained rather small.