Chapter III: The Development of the Sonata Form (2)

Christian Bach, on the other hand, is full of the new idea. His life itself may well claim attention. It is sufficiently remarkable that he almost alone of the great Bach family which had for generations played a part in the development of music in Germany, and was to play such a part there for many years to come, broke the traditions of his fathers, went to Italy for eight years, even became a Catholic, and finally decided to pass the last twenty years of his life in London. Though the many stories of his extravagances and dissipations have been most unrighteously exaggerated, he was none the less of a gay, light-hearted and pleasure-loving nature which is in sharp contrast to the graver and more pious dispositions of his ancestors.

His father died when he was but fifteen years old. He had already shown marked ability as a player of the harpsichord, and his brother Emanuel took him to Berlin after the father’s death and trained him further in the art for four years. Then followed the eight years in Italy where he was beloved and admired by all with whom he came in contact, not the least by the great Padre Martini in Bologna, with whom he studied for many years. In 1762 he went to London, chiefly to write operas. He was enormously popular and successful. He was court clavecinist to Queen Anne and in 1780 a Bath paper spoke of him as the greatest player of his time.

At some time not long after his arrival in England he published a set of six sonatas for the harpsichord, dedicated to the amusement of ‘His Serene Highness, Monseigneur le duc Ernst, duc de Mecklenburg.’ Of these the second, in D major, offers a particularly excellent example of clear, lucid writing in the sonata form. The first movement is admirable. The first theme is composed of vigorous chords. It is given twice, then followed by a transitional passage full of fire; the right hand keeping a continuous flow of broken chord figures, over the rising and falling powerful motives in the left. The preparation for the announcement of the second theme is in remarkably mature classical manner, and the lovely melodious second theme, with its gentle Albertian accompaniment, is clearly a promise of Mozart to come. There is a fine free closing passage. The development section is long and varied, astonishingly modern; and the return to the first theme, prepared by a long pedal point and a crescendo, is not a little fiery and dramatic. The second movement, an andante in G major, and the quick final movement in D again, round off a work which for clearness of form, for balance in proportions, and for a certain fine and healthy charm, is wholly admirable. Above all there is about all his work a real grace which, superficial as it may be, is a precious and perhaps a rare quality in pianoforte music, a quality both of elegance and amiability. It is a reflection of his own amiable nature, so conspicuous in all his dealings with the little Mozart during the spring of 1765.

Christian Bach is no careless musician. His work is done with a sure and unfailing hand. No man could have lived fifteen years in the house of his father, Sebastian, and four more in that of his brother Emanuel, and yet again eight under the strong personal influence of Padre Martini, the most learned contrapuntist of his day, without acquiring a mastery of the science of music. Such Christian Bach had at his command; such he chose to conceal under a lightness and gaiety of thought and style.

As regards instrumental music in particular his influence upon Mozart, though in some ways ineradicable, was largely supplanted by the influence of Josef and Michael Haydn. What Mozart received from him in the domain of opera, however, as summarized by Messrs. de Wyzewa and Saint-Foix in their ‘W. A. Mozart’ (Paris, 1912), was characteristic of all of Bach’s music: ‘A mixture of discrete elegance and melodic purity, a sweetness sometimes a little too soft [_un peu molle_] but always charming, a preference of beauty above intensity of dramatic expression, or rather a constant preoccupation to keep expression within the limits of beauty.’

Muzio Clementi was born in Rome in 1752, but when hardly more than a lad of fourteen was brought to London by an English gentleman, and London was henceforth his home until he died in 1832. He was a brilliant virtuoso, though he travelled but little to exhibit his powers; an excellent pedagogue; a very shrewd business man. Among his many compositions of all kinds, about sixty are sonatas for pianoforte. The first series of three was published in 1770 and is usually taken to determine the date at which the pianoforte began really to supplant the harpsichord.

Concerning Clementi’s relation to the development of a new pianoforte technique we shall speak further on. Here we have to do with the musical worth of his sonatas. Clementi was born before Mozart and Beethoven. He outlived them both, not to mention Haydn, Weber and Schubert. Mozart, after a test of skill with him in Vienna, had little to say of him save that he had an excellent, clear technique. He remained primarily a virtuoso in all his composition; but on the one hand he undoubtedly influenced Mozart and Beethoven,--and not only in the matter of pianoforte effects,--while on the other he no less obviously held himself open to influence from them, particularly from Beethoven.

His pianoforte sonatas show a steady development towards the curtailing of sheer virtuosity and the supremacy of emotional seriousness. In the early works, op. 2, op. 7, and op. 12, for example, he is obviously writing for display. The sonatas in op. 2 have but two movements. After that he generally composes them of three. The spirit of Scarlatti prevails, though it is almost impossible to point to any close relationship between the two men. The last movement of the second sonata in op. 26 perhaps resembles Scarlatti as definitely as any. But the fundamental difference between them, which may well obliterate all traces of the indebtedness of the one to the other, is that Clementi writes in the new melodic style. That he was a skilled contrapuntist did not restrain his use of the Alberti bass and other formulas of accompaniment.

He composed with absolute clearness. The classical triplex form, with its conventional transitional passages, its clear-cut sections, and, above all, its well-defined thematic melodies, can nowhere else be better exemplified. What perhaps mars his music, or at any rate makes a great part of it tiresome to modern ears, is the employment of long scale passages in many of his transitional passages. They cannot but suggest the exercise book and the hours of practice which are back of them. The concise figures of Schobert, of Haydn and Mozart may sound thin, but, though they suggest sometimes the schoolboy, they spare us the school.

On the other hand, Clementi was wonderfully fertile in figures that sound well on the piano, and many of his sonatas, empty enough of genuine feeling, are still pleasant and vivacious to the listener. Yet they seem to have sunk down into the tomb. They are perhaps never heard in concerts at the present day. Those which are only show music may willingly be let go. They lack the diamond sparkle of Scarlatti. But there are others, even among the earlier ones, which are musically too worthy and still too interesting to be so ruthlessly consigned to the grave as the modern temper has consigned them. Have we after all too much pianoforte music as it is? It seems to be more than a change of fashion that keeps Clementi dead. Perhaps it is the shade of the admirable but awful _Gradus ad Parnassum_ over all his other work. Perhaps a man has the right to live immortally by the virtue of but one of his excellencies. In the case of Clementi posterity has chosen to remember only the success of a teacher. The great series of studies or exercises published in 1817 under the usual pompous title of _Gradus ad Parnassum_ alone of all his work still retains some general attention.

And this in spite of many beauties in his sonatas. Even among the early ones there are some distinguished by a fineness of feeling and a true if not great gift of musical expression. Take, for example, the sonata in G minor, number three of the seventh opus. The first movement, _allegro con spirito_, has more to recommend it than unusual formal compactness and perfection. The opening theme has a color not in the power of the mere music-maker. It is true that there is the almost ever-present scale passage in the transition to the second theme; but the second theme itself has a grace of movement and even a certain sinuousness of harmony that cannot but suggest Mozart. There are sudden accents and rough chords that foreshadow a mannerism of Beethoven; and the full measure of silence before the restatement begins is a true romantic touch.

The spirit of the slow movement is perhaps a trifle perfunctory. There is little hint of Mozart, who, alone of the classical composers, could somehow always keep the wings of his music gently fluttering through the leaden _tempo adagio_. The sharp--one may well say shocking--sudden fortissimos herald Beethoven again. The movement is, however, blessedly short; and the final _presto_ is full of fire and dark, flaring and subsiding by turns.

Of the later sonatas that in B minor, op. 40, No. 2, and that in G minor, op. 50, No. 3, have been justly admired. Yet excellent as they are, one can hardly pretend to do more than lay a tribute on their graves. Only some unforeseen trump can rouse them from what seems to be their eternal sleep. One feature of the former may be noted: the return of a part of the slow movement in the midst of the rapid last movement. Such a process unites at least the last two movements very firmly together, tends to make of the sonata as a whole something more than a series of independent movements put in line according to the rule of convention.

The sonata in G minor also seems to have an organic life as a whole. Clementi gave it a title, _Didone abbandonata_, and called the whole a _scena tragica_. This is treating the whole sonata as a drama based upon a single idea; but inasmuch as it was written probably between 1820 and 1821, this conception of the sonata probably came to him from Beethoven rather than from his own idealism.[25]

It is hard to turn our thumbs down on Clementi. It may be unjust as well. He entered the arena of the sonata and in many ways no man excelled him there. Mozart’s impulsive condemnation has gone hard with him. We are like sheep, and even the wisest will listen all but unquestioning to a man who had, if ever man had, the voice of an angel. And so Clementi is all but forgotten as a sonatorial gladiator and remembered only as a trainer. That the greatest of the fighters profited by his teaching cannot be doubted. That they despoiled him of many ideas and even of his finery before his flesh was cold is also true. They made better use of them.

A glance over Clementi’s sonatas can hardly astonish more than by what it reveals of the great commonness of musical idioms during the Viennese period. Phrase after phrase and endless numbers of fragments bob up with the features we had thought were only Haydn’s, or Mozart’s, or Beethoven’s. Mozart quite openly appropriated a theme from one of Clementi’s sonatas[26] as the basis of his overture to the ‘Magic Flute.’ Such a fact is, however, far less suggestive than the intangible similarity between the stuff Clementi used and that which his greater contemporaries in Vienna built with. Compare, for instance, the first movement of Clementi’s sonata in B-flat, op. 34, No. 2, with the first movement of Beethoven’s symphony in C minor. Likeness of treatment, likeness of skill, likeness of mood there are not; but the juxtaposition of the two movements creates a whisper that Clementi passed through music side by side with some of the greatest of all composers.

IV

Both Schobert in Paris and Wagenseil in Vienna are more than straws which show the way the wind blew through the classical sonata. They are streaks in the wind itself. On the one came the seeds of the new works in Mannheim to the clavecins in Paris; and on the other such seeds were blown to harpsichords in Vienna. Both men wrote great quantities of music for the harpsichord, but oftenest with a part for violin added. This part was, however, usually _ad libitum_.

Concerning Schobert we may quote once more from the ‘Life of Mozart’ by Messrs. de Wyzewa and de Saint-Foix. ‘From 1763 up to the general upheaval caused by the Revolution, he was the most played and the most loved of all the composers of French sonatas. * * * Outside France, moreover, his works were equally highly prized; we find testimony to it in every sort of German, English and Italian treatise on the history or on the _esthétique_ of the piano.’

Concerning Wagenseil we may recall the anecdote of little Mozart who one evening, on the occasion of his first visit to Vienna, refused to play unless Wagenseil, the greatest of players and composers for harpsichord in Vienna, were present. Dr. Burney visited him some years later and heard him play, old and ailing, with great fire and majesty.

Schobert was, as we have said, of Silesian origin. He came to Paris as a young man, probably by way of Mannheim, some time between 1755 and 1760; and from then on to the time of his death in 1767 adapted his music more and more to the French taste. Hence we find in it a simple but strong expression, an elegant clearness and a touch of that _sensibilité larmoyante_ made fashionable by Rousseau, showing itself in the frequent use of minor keys, evidently at the root of the very personal emotional life of his music.[27] Mozart came very strongly under his influence.

Wagenseil, on the other hand, shows yet more of the Italian influence, so strong even at that day in Vienna, to which Haydn was to owe much. His work lacks emotion and poetry, is facile and brilliant and clear, without much personal color.

In the matter of emotional warmth the sonatas of Emanuel Bach, however vague they may be in form by contrast with those of Schobert and his brother Christian, are distinguished above those of his contemporaries. Emanuel--his full name was Carl Philipp Emanuel--was born in Weimar in March, 1714. An early intent to devote himself to the practice of law was given up because of his marked aptitude for music. In 1740 he entered the service of Frederick the Great as court cembalist. In 1757 he gave up this post and went to Hamburg, where he worked as organist, teacher, and composer until his death there on the fourteenth of December, 1788.

The works by which he is best known are the six sets of sonatas, with rondos and fantasies too, which he published between 1779 and 1787 in Leipzig under the title of _Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber_ (‘Sonatas for Connoisseurs and Amateurs’). Many of the sonatas, however, had been composed before 1779.

An earlier set, dedicated to the Princess Amelia of Prussia and published in 1760, bears the interesting title, _Sechs Sonaten fürs Clavier mit veränderten Reprisen_ (‘Six Sonatas for Clavier with Varied Repeats’). This title, together with Bach’s preface to the set, shows conclusively that in repeating the sections of movements of sonatas, players added some free ornamentation of their own to the music as the composer published it. The practice seems to have been an ancient one, applied to the suite before the sonata came into being. Thus some of the _doubles_ of Couperin and Sebastian Bach may be taken as special efforts on the part of the composers to safeguard their music from the carelessness and lack of knowledge and taste of dilettanti. To what an extent such variation in repeat might go and how much it might add to the richness of the music are shown, for example, by the double of the sarabande in Sebastian Bach’s sixth English suite.

Emanuel Bach’s sonatas are of very unequal merit. The sonata in F minor,[28] published in the third set for _Kenner und Liebhaber_ in 1781, but written nearly twenty years earlier, has little either of extrinsic or intrinsic beauty to recommend it. Not only does the inchoate nature of the second theme in the first movement fail to save the movement from monotony; the first theme itself is stark and devoid of life. There is a lack of smoothness, a constant hitching. The andante is not spontaneous for all its sentimentality, and the final movement is fragmentary.

A sonata in A major, on the other hand, written not long after, and published in 1779, is charming throughout. The first theme in the first movement is conventional enough, but it has sparkle; and though the second theme is not very distinctly different from the first, the movement is full of variety and life. Particularly charming are the measures constituting an unusually long epilogue to the first section. The harmonies are richly colored, if not striking; and the use of the epilogue in the development section is most effective. So is the full measure pause before the cascade of sound which flows into the restatement. The andante is over-ornamented, but the harmonic groundwork is solid and interesting. The last movement suggests Scarlatti, and has the animated and varied flow which characterizes the first.

A sonata in A minor, written about 1780 and published in the second series for _Kenner und Liebhaber_, is in many ways typical of Emanuel Bach at his best. There is still in the first movement that vagueness of structure which may usually be attributed to the lack of distinctness of his second theme. But the first theme has a fine declamatory vigor, in the spirit of the theme out of which his father built the fifth fugue in the first book of the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord’; and the movement as a whole has the broad sweep of a brilliant fantasy.

The andante, with its delicate imitations, foreshadowing Schumann, is full of poetic sentiment. It leads without break into the rapid final movement. Here the declamatory spirit of the first movement reigns again, but in lighter mood. There is in fact an unmistakable kinship between the first and last movements, which must be felt though it cannot be traced to actual thematic relationship. Here is a sonata, then, which, though divided into three movements, seems sprung of one fundamental idea.

Such a conception of the sonata is by no means always so clear in his work; yet it must be said that he, more than any composer down to Beethoven, was inclined to make of the sonata a poetic whole. His aim was rather furthered than hindered by the vagueness of form of the separate movements. His sonatas are all the more fantasies for being less clearly sonatas; and they are often rich in that very quality in which the regular classical sonata was so poor--imagination.

Most of what has been said regarding his creation or establishing of the sonata, particularly of the triplex form, must be very largely discounted. Haydn and Mozart learned little from him in the arrangement of their ideas, which is form; much in the treatment of them, which is expression. That quality of poetry which we may still admire in his music today, vague or obscure as its form may be, was the quality in his playing most admired by those contemporaries who heard him.

His excellent book on how to play the clavier counsels clearness and exactness, but it is a heartfelt appeal for beauty and expressiveness as well. What is the long, detailed analysis of _agrémens_ but the explanation of practically the only means of subtle expression which the cembalist could acquire? His love for the clavichord, which, for all the frailty of its tone, was capable of fine shadings of sound, never waned. He commended it to all as the best instrument upon which to practise, for the clumsy hand had no power to call forth the charm which was its only quality. Indeed, he received the pianoforte coldly. His keyboard music was probably conceived, the brilliant for the harpsichord, the more intimate for the clavichord. And towards the end of his life he gave utterance to his belief that the only function of music was to stir the emotions and that the player who could not do that might as well not play.

In turning to the best of his sonatas one turns to profoundly beautiful music, music that unquestionably has the power to stir the heart. The great spirit of the father has breathed upon it and given it life. The turns of his melodies and their ineffably tender cadences, and, above all, the chromatic richness of his harmonies are the voice of his father. One may be constantly startled and bewildered. There is something ghostly abroad in them. We hear and do not hear, we almost see and do not see, the all-powerful Sebastian. But it is the voice of the father in a new language, his face in shadow, in the mist before dawn. One is tempted to cry with Hamlet: ‘Well said, old mole! Canst work i’ the ground so fast?’ It is easy to understand that Haydn, worn out with his daily fight against starvation, could come back to his cracked clavichord and play away half the night with the sonatas of Emanuel Bach; that Mozart could call him father of them all. But in spirit, not in flesh. And it is, after all, the spirit of Sebastian that thus attends the succeeding births and rebirths of music.

The harpsichord works by W. Friedemann Bach, the oldest and, according to some accounts, the favorite son of Johann Sebastian, have had probably far less influence upon the development of pianoforte music. But they contain many measures of great beauty. Madame Farrenc included twelve polonaises, a sonata (in E-flat major), several fugues, and four superb fantasias in the _Trésor des pianistes_. The sonata is regular in form, and a few of the polonaises are in the triplex form. Thus Friedemann Bach shows that he, too, like his brother Emanuel, allied himself to the new movement in music. His mastery of musical science, however, is evident; and that he knew the keyboard well is proved by the unusual brilliance of his fantasias. In the main it may be said that the greatest beauty of his music whispers of his father.

Something of the spirit shows itself in the pianoforte sonatas of Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, a composer now little known, whose work deserves study. He died at Dessau, where most of his life had been spent, in 1796, just on the eve of Beethoven’s rise to prominence. Twelve of his sonatas have recently been published in Paris under the supervision of M. Vincent d’Indy. They show a blending of two styles: the German style which he acquired from Emanuel Bach in Berlin, and the Scarlatti style, of which he made a study during two years spent in Italy. Three sonatas, in E minor, in F-sharp minor, and in D major, written near the close of his life, are in two movements, both of which seem welded together in the manner of the later sonatas of Beethoven. The treatment of the pianoforte or harpsichord is modern, particularly in the major section of the Rondo of the sonata in E minor, and in the passage work contrasted with the beautiful first theme of the sonata in F-sharp minor. In a sonata in C major, belonging to this period, a fugue is introduced as an episode in the final rondo. Haydn had already used the fugue as the last movement of the string quartet, Mozart as the last movement of a symphony. Rust, in applying it to the pianoforte sonata, foreshadowed Beethoven.[29]

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Pietro Locatelli, b. Bergamo, 1693; d. Amsterdam, 1764; famous violinist, pupil of Corelli. His works, _Concerti_, trio sonatas, etc., are important in the development of the sonata form.

[22] Antonio Vivaldi, b. Venice, ca. 1680; d. 1743; completed Torelli’s and Albinoni’s work in the creation of the violin concerto.

[23] Jean Benjamin de Laborde: _Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne_, 1780.

[24] It seems hardly worth while to add that there are well-known sonatas in which no movement is in the triplex form. _Cf._ the Mozart sonata in A major (K. 331) and the Beethoven sonata in A-flat major, op. 26.

[25] It is worthy of note that a sonata in G minor for violin by Tartini was at one time known by the name _Didone abbandonata_. _Cf._ Wasielewski: _Die Violine und ihre Meister_.

[26] Opus 43, No. 2.

[27] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 65, _et seq._

[28] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).

[29] The sonatas of Rust as printed by his grandson showed many extraordinary modern features which have since been proved forgeries. The fiery discussions to which they gave rise have been summarized by M. D. Calvocoressi in two articles in the _Musical Times_ (London) for January and February, 1914.