# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Sonata

​SONATA. The history of the Sonata is the history of an attempt to cope with one of the most singular problems ever presented to the mind of man, and its solution is one of the most successful achievements of his artistic instincts. A Sonata is, as its name implies, a sound-piece, and a sound-piece alone: in its purest and most perfect examples, it is unexplained by title or text, and unassisted by voices; it is nothing but an unlimited concatenation of musical notes. Such notes have individually no significance; and even the simplest principles of their relative definition and juxtaposition, such as is necessary to make the most elementary music, had to be drawn from the inner self and the consciousness of things which belong to man's nature only, without the possibility of finding guidance or more than the crudest suggestion from the observation of things external. Yet the structural principles by which such unpromising materials become intelligible have been so ordered and developed by the unaided musical instinct of many successive generations of composers, as to render possible long works which not only penetrate and stir us in detail, but are in their entire mass direct, consistent, and convincing. Such works, in their completest and most severely abstract forms, are Sonatas.
The name seems to have been first adopted purely as the antithesis to Cantata, the musical piece that was sung. It begins to come into notice about the same time as that form of composition, soon after the era of the most marked revolution in music, which began at the end of the sixteenth century; when a band of enthusiasts, led by visionary ideals, unconsciously sowed the seed of true modern music in an attempt to wrest the monopoly of the art in its highest forms from the predominant influence of the church, and to make it serve for the expression of human feelings of more comprehensive range. At this time the possibilities of polyphony in its ecclesiastical forms may well have seemed almost exhausted, and men turned about to find new fields which should give scope for a greater number of workers. The nature of their speculations and the associations of the old order of things alike conspired to direct their attention first to Opera and Cantata, and here they had something to guide them; but for abstract instrumental music of the Sonata kind they had for a long time no clue. The first suggestion was clearly accidental. It appears probable that the excessive elaboration of the Madrigal led to the practice of accompanying the voice parts with viols; and from this the step is but short to leaving the viols by themselves and making a vague kind of chamber music without the voices. This appears to have been the source of the instrumental Canzonas which were written in tolerable numbers till some way into the eighteenth century. It does not appear that any distinct rules for their construction were recognised, but the examination of a large number, written at different periods from Frescobaldi to J. S. Bach, proves the uniform object of the composers to have been a lax kind of fugue, such as might have served in its main outlines for the vocal madrigals. Burney says the earliest examples of 'sonatas' he had been able to discover in his devoted enquiries were by Turini, published at Venice in 1624. His description of those he examined answers perfectly to the character of the canzonas, for, he says, they consist of one movement, in fugue and imitation throughout. Sonatas did not, however, rest long at this point of simplicity, but were destined very early to absorb material from other sources; and though the canzona kind of movement maintained its distinct position through many changes in its environment, and is still found in the Violin Sonatas of J. S. Bach, Handel and Porpora, the madrigal, which was its source, soon ceased to have direct influence upon three parts of the more complete structure. The suggestion for these came from the dance, and the newly-invented opera or dramatic cantata. The former had existed and made the chief staple of instrumental music for generations, but it requires to be well understood that its direct connection with dancing puts it out of the category of abstract music of the kind which was now obscurely germinating. The dances were understood through their relation with one order of dance motions. There would be the order of rhythmic motions which taken together was called a Branle, another that was called a Pavan, another a Gigue; and each dance-tune maintained the distinctive rhythm and style throughout. On the other hand, the radical principle of the Sonata, developed in the course of generations, is the compounding of a limitless variety of rhythms; and though isolated passages may be justly interpreted as representing gestures of an ideal dance kind, like that of the ancients, it is not through this association that the group of movements taken as a whole is understood, but by the disposition of such elements and others in relation to one another. This conception took time to develop, though it is curious how early composers began to perceive the radical difference between the Suite and the Sonata. Occasionally a doubt seems to be implied by confusing the names together or by actually calling a collection of dance-tunes a sonata; but it can hardly be questioned that from almost the earliest times, as is proved by a strong majority of cases, there was a sort of undefined presentiment that their developments lay along totally different paths. In the first attempts to form an aggregate of distinct movements, the composers had to take their forms where they ​could find them; and among these were the familiar dance-tunes, which for a long while held a prominent position in the heterogeneous group of movements, and were only in late times transmuted into the Scherzo which supplanted the Minuet and Trio in one case, and the Finale or Rondo, which ultimately took the place of the Gigue, or Chaconne, or other similar dance-forms as the last member of the group.
The third source, as above mentioned, was the drama, and from this two general ideas were derivable: one from the short passages of instrumental prelude or interlude, and the other from the vocal portions. Of these, the first was intelligible in the drama through its relation to some point in the story, but it also early attained to a crude condition of form which was equally available apart from the drama. The other produced at first the vaguest and most rhapsodical of all the movements, as the type taken was the irregular declamatory recitative which appears to have abounded in the early operas.
It is hardly likely that it will ever be ascertained who first experimented in sonatas of several distinct movements. Many composers are mentioned in different places as having contributed works of the kind, such as Farina, Cesti, Graziani, among Italians, Rosenmüller among Germans, and John Jenkins among Englishmen. Burney also mentions a Michael Angelo Rossi, whose date is given as from about 1620 to 1660. An Andante and Allegro by him, given in Pauer's Alte Meister, require notice parenthetically as presenting a curious puzzle, if the dates are correct and the authorship rightly attributed. Though belonging to a period considerably before Corelli, they show a state of form which certainly was not commonly realised till more than a hundred years later. The distribution of subject-matter and key, and the clearness with which they are distinguished, are like the works of the middle of the 18th rather than the 17th century, and they belong absolutely to the Sonata order, and the conscious style of the later period. But as these stand alone it is not safe to infer anything from them. The actual structure of large numbers of sonatas composed in different parts of Europe soon after this time, proves a tolerably clear consent as to the arrangement and quality of the movements. A fine vigorous example is a Sonata in C minor for violin and figured bass, by H. J. F. Biber, a German, said to have been first published in 1681. This consists of five movements in alternate slow and quick time. The first is an introductory Largo of contrapuntal character, with clear and consistent treatment in the fugally imitative manner; the second is a Passacaglia, which answers roughly to a continuous string of variations on a short well-marked period; the third is a rhapsodical movement consisting of interspersed portions of Poco lento, Presto, and Adagio, leading into a Gavotte; and the last is a further rhapsodical movement alternating Adagio and Allegro. In this group the influence of the madrigal or canzona happens to be absent; the derivation of the movements being—in the first the contrapuntalism of the music of the church, in the second and fourth, dances, and in the third and fifth probably operatic or dramatic declamation. The work is essentially a violin sonata with accompaniment, and the violin-part points to the extraordinarily rapid advance to mastery which was made in the few years after its being accepted as an instrument fit for high-class music. The writing for the instrument is decidedly elaborate and difficult, especially in the double stops and contrapuntal passages which were much in vogue with almost all composers from this time till J. S. Bach. In the structure of the movements the fugal influences are most apparent, and there are very few signs of the systematic repetition of subjects in connection with well-marked distribution of keys, which in later times became indispensable.
Similar features and qualities are shown in the curious set of seveA Sonatas for Clavier by Johann Kuhnau, called 'Frische Clavier Früchte,' etc., of a little later date; but there are also in some parts indications of an awakening sense of the relation and balance of keys. The grouping of the movements is similar to those of Biber, though not identical; thus the first three have five movements or divisions, and the remainder four. There are examples of the same kind of rhapsodical slow movements, as may be seen in the Sonata (No. 2 of the set) which is given in Pauer's Alte Meister; there are several fugal movements, some of them clearly and musically written; and there are some good illustrations of dance types, as in the last movement of No. 3, and the Ciaccona of No. 6. But more important for the thread of continuous development are the peculiar attempts to balance tolerably defined and distinct subjects, and to distribute key and subject in large expanses, of which there are at least two clear examples. In a considerable proportion of the movements the most noticeable method of treatment is to alternate two characteristic groups of figures or subjects almost throughout, in different positions of the scale and at irregular intervals of time. This is illustrated in the first movement of the Sonata No. 2, in the first movement of No. 1, and in the third movement of No. 5. The subjects in the last of these are as follows:—
The point most worth notice is that the device lies half-way between fugue and true sonata-form. The alternation is like the recurrence of subject and countersubject in the former, wandering hazily in and out, and forwards and backwards, between nearly allied keys, as would be the case in a fugue. But the subjects are not presented in ​single parts or fugally answered. They enter and re-enter for the most part as concrete lumps of harmony, the harmonic accompaniment of the melody being taken as part of the idea; and this is essentially a quality of sonata-form. So the movements appear to hang midway between the two radically distinct domains of form; and while deriving most of their disposition from the older manners, they look forward, though obscurely, in the direction of modern practices. How obscure the ideas of the time on the subject must have been, appears from the other point which has been mentioned above; which is, that in a few cases Kuhnau has hit upon clear outlines of tonal form. In the second Sonata, for instance, there are two Arias, as they are called. They do not correspond in the least with modern notions of an aria any more than do the rare examples in Bach's and Handel's Suites. The first is a little complete piece of sixteen bars, divided exactly into halves by a double bar, with repeats after the familiar manner. The first half begins in F and ends in C, the second half goes as far as D minor and back, to conclude in F again. The subject-matter is irregularly distributed in the parts, and does not make any pretence of coinciding with the tonal divisions. The second Aria is on a different plan, and is one of the extremely rare examples in this early period of clear coincidence between subject and key. It is in the form which is often perversely misnamed 'lied-form,' which will in this place be called 'primary form' to avoid circumlocution and waste of space. It consists of twenty bars in D minor representing one distinct idea, complete with close: then sixteen bars devoted to a different subject, beginning in B♭ and passing back ultimately to D minor, recapitulating the whole of the first twenty bars in that key, and emphasising the close by repeating the last four bars. Such decisiveness, when compared with the unregulated and unbalanced wandering of longer movements, either points to the conclusion that composers did not realise the desirableness of balance in coincident ranges of subject and key on. a large scale; or that they were only capable of feeling it in short and easily grasped movements. It seems highly probable that their minds, being projected towards the kind of distribution of subject which obtained in fugal movements, were not on the lookout for effects of the sonata order which to moderns appear so obvious. So that, even if they had been capable of realising them more systematically they would not yet have thought it worth while to apply their knowledge. In following the development of Sonata, it ought never to be forgotten that composers had no idea whither they were tending, and had to use what they did know as stepping-stones to the unknown. In art, each step that is gained opens a fresh vista; but often, till the new position is mastered, what lies beyond is completely hidden and undreamed of. In fact, each step is not so much a conquest of new land, as the creation of a new mental or emotional position in the human organism. The achievements of art are the unravellings of hidden possibilities of abstract law, through the constant and cumulative extension of instincts. They do not actually exist till man has made them; they are the counterpart of his internal conditions, and change and develop with the changes of his mental powers and sensitive qualities, and apart from him have no validity. There is no such thing as leaping across a chasm on to a new continent, neither is there any gulf fixed anywhere, but continuity and inevitable antecedents to every consequent; the roots of the greatest masterpieces of modern times lie obscurely hidden in the wild dances and barbarous howlings of the remotest ancestors of the race, who began to take pleasure in rhythm and sound, and every step was into the unknown, or it may be better said not only unknown but non-existent till made by mental effort. The period from about 1600 to about 1725 contains the very difficult steps which led from the style appropriate to a high order of vocal music—of which the manner of speech is polyphonic, and the ideal type of form, the fugue—to the style appropriate to abstract instrumental music, of which the best manner is contrapuntally expressed harmony, and the ideal type of form, the Sonata. These works of Kuhnau's happen to illustrate very curiously the transition in which a true though crude idea of abstract music seems to have been present in the composer's mind, at the same time that his distribution of subjects and keys was almost invariably governed by fugal habits of thinking, even where the statement of subjects is in a harmonic manner. In some of these respects he is nearer and in some further back from the true solution of the problem than his famous contemporary Corelli; but his labours do not extend over so much space nor had they so much direct and widespread influence. In manner and distribution of movements they are nearer to his predecessor and compatriot Biber; and for that reason, and also to maintain the continuity of the historic development after Corelli, the consideration of his works has been taken a little before their actual place in point of time.
The works of Corelli form one of the most familiar landmarks in the history of music, and as they are exclusively instrumental it is clear that careful consideration ought to elicit a great deal of interesting matter, such as must throw valuable light on the state of thought of his time. He published no less than sixty sonatas of different kinds, which are divisible into distinct groups in accordance with purpose or construction. The first main division is that suggested by their titles. There are twenty-four 'Sonate da Chiesa' for strings, lute, and organ, twenty-four 'Sonate da Camera' for the same instruments, and twelve Solos or Sonatas for violin and violoncello, or 'cembalo.' In these the first and simplest matter for observation is the distribution of the movements. The average, in Church and Chamber Sonatas alike, is strongly in favour of four, beginning with a slow movement, and alternating the rest. There is also an attempt at balance in the alternation of character between the movements. The first is commonly in 4-time, of dignified and solid ​character, and generally aiming less at musical expression than the later movements. The second movement in the Church Sonata is freely fugal, in fact the exact type above described as a Canzona; the style is commonly rather dry, and the general effect chiefly a complacent kind of easy swing such as is familiar in most of Handel's fugues. In the Chamber Sonatas the character of the second movement is rather more variable; in some it is an Allemande, which, being dignified and solid, is a fair counterpart to the Canzona in the other Sonatas: sometimes it is a Courante, which is of lighter character. The third movement is the only one which is ever in a different key from the first and last. It is generally a characteristic one, in which other early composers of instrumental music, as well as Corelli, clearly endeavoured to infuse a certain amount of vague and tender sentiment. The most common time is 3-2. The extent of the movement is always limited, and the style, though simply contrapuntal in fact, seems to be ordered with a view to obtain smooth harmonious full-chord effects, as a contrast to the brusqueness of the preceding fugal movement. There is generally a certain amount of imitation between the parts, irregularly and fancifully disposed, but almost always avoiding the sounding of a single part alone. In the Chamber Sonatas, as might be anticipated, the third movement is frequently a Sarabande, though by no means always; for the same kind of slow movement as that in the Church Sonatas is sometimes adopted, as in the third Sonata of the Opera Seconda, which is as good an example of that class as could be taken. The last movement is almost invariably of a lively character in Church and Chamber Sonatas alike. In the latter, Gigas and Gavottes predominate, the character of which is so familiar that they need no description. The last movements in the Church Sonatas are of a similar vivacity and sprightliness, and sometimes so like in character and rhythm as to be hardly distinguishable from dance-tunes, except by the absence of the defining name and the double bar in the middle, and the repeats which are almost inevitable in the dance movements. This general scheme is occasionally varied without material difference of principle by the interpolation of an extra quick movement, as in the first six Sonatas of the Opera Quinta; in which it is a sort of show movement for the violin in a 'Moto continuo' style, added before or after the central slow movement. In a few cases the number is reduced to three by dropping the slow prelude, and in a few others the order is unsystematisable.
In accordance with the principles of classification above defined, the Church Sonatas appear to be much more strictly abstract than those for Chamber. The latter are, in many cases, not distinguishable from Suites. The Sonatas of Opera Quinta are variable. Thus the attractive Sonata in E minor, No. 8, is quite in the recognised suite-manner. Some are like the Sonate da Chiesa, and some are types of the mixed order more universally accepted later, having several undefined movements, together with one dance. The actual structure of the individual movements is most uncertain. Corelli clearly felt that something outside the domain of the fugal tribe was to be attained, but he had no notion of strict outlines of procedure. One thing which hampered him and other composers of the early times of instrumental music was their unwillingness to accept formal tunes as an element in their order of art. They had existed in popular song and dance music for certainly a century, and probably much more; but the idea of adopting them in high-class music was not yet in favour. Corelli occasionally produces one, but the fact that they generally occur with him in Gigas, which are the freest and least responsible portion of the Sonata, supports the inference that they were not yet regarded as worthy of general acceptance even if realised as an admissible element, but could only be smuggled-in in the least respectable movement with an implied smile to disarm criticism. Whether this was decisively so or not, the fact remains that till long after Corelli's time the conventional tune element was conspicuously absent from instrumental compositions. Hence the structural principles which to a modern seem almost inevitable were very nearly impracticable, or at all events unsuitable to the general principles of the music of that date. A modern expects the opening bars of a movement to present its most important subject, and he anticipates its repetition in the latter portion of the movement as a really vital part of form of any kind. But association and common sense were alike against such a usage being universal in Corelli's time. The associations of ecclesiastical and other serious vocal music, which were then preponderant to a supreme degree, were against strongly salient points, or strongly marked interest in short portions of a movement in contrast to parts of comparative unimportance. Consequently the opening bars of a movement would not be expected to stand out in sufficiently strong relief to be remembered unless they were repeated at once, as they would be in fugue. Human nature is against it. For not only does the mind take time to be wrought up to a fully receptive condition, unless the beginning is most exceptionally striking, but what comes after is likely to obliterate the impression made by it. As a matter of fact, if all things were equal, the portion most likely to remain in the mind of an average listener, is that immediately preceding the strongest cadences or conclusions of the paragraphs of the movement. It is true, composers do not argue in this manner, but they feel such things vaguely or instinctively, and generally with more sureness and justice than the cold-blooded argumentation of a theorist could attain to. Many examples in other early composers besides Corelli, emphasise this point effectively. The earliest attempts at structural form must inevitably present some simply explicable principle of this sort, which is only not trivial because it is a very significant as well as indispensable starting-point. Corelli's commonest ​devices of form are the most unsophisticated applications of such simple reasoning. In the first place, in many movements which are not fugal, the opening bars are immediately repeated in another position in the scale, simply and without periphrasis, as if to give the listener assurance of an idea of balance at the very outset. That he did this to a certain extent consciously, is obvious from his having employed the device in at least the following Sonatas—2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, of Opera 1$^{ma}$; 2, 4, 7, 8, of Opera 3$^{za}$; and 2, 4, 5, and 11, of Opera 4$^{ta}$; and Tartini and other composers of the same school followed his lead. This device is not however either so conspicuous or so common as that of repeating the concluding passage of the first half at the end of the whole, or of the concluding passages of one half or both consecutively. This, however, was not restricted to Corelli, but is found in the works of most composers from his time to Scarlatti, J. S. Bach and his sons; and it is no extravagant hypothesis that its gradual extension was the direct origin of the characteristic second section and second subject of modern sonata movements. In many cases it is the only element of form, in the modern sense, in Corelli's movements. In a few cases he hit upon more complicated principles. The Corrente in Sonata 5 of Opera 4$^{ta}$, is nearly a miniature of modern binary form. The well-known Giga in A in the fifth Sonata of Opera 5$^{ta}$, has balance of key in the first half of the movement, modulation, and something like consistency to subject-matter at the beginning of the second half, and due recapitulation of principal subject-matter at the end. The last movement of the eighth Sonata of the Opera Terza, is within reasonable distance of rondo-form, though this form is generally as conspicuous for its absence in early sonatas as tunes are, and probably the one follows as a natural consequence of the other. Of the simple primary form, consisting of corresponding beginning and end, and contrast of some sort in the middle, there is singularly little. The clearest example is probably the Tempo di Gavotta, which concludes the ninth Sonata of Opera Quinta. He also supplies suggestions of the earliest types of Sonata form, in which both the beginnings and endings of each half of the movement correspond; as this became an accepted principle of structure with later composers, it will have to be considered more fully in relation to their works. Of devices of form which belong to the great polyphonic tribe, Corelli uses many, but with more musical feeling than learning. His fugues are not remarkable as fugues, and he uses contrapuntal imitation rather as a subordinate means of carrying on the interest, than of expounding any wonderful device of pedantic wisdom, as was too common in those days. He makes good use of the chaconne-form, which was a great favourite with the early composers, and also uses the kindred device of carrying the repetition of a short figure through the greater part of a movement in different phases and positions of the scale. In some cases he merely rambles on without any perceptible aim whatever, only keeping up an equable flow of sound with pleasant interfacings of easy counterpoint, led on from moment to moment by suspensions and occasional imitation, and here and there a helpful sequence. Corelli's position as a composer is inseparably mixed up with his position as one of the earliest masters of his instrument. His style of writing for it does not appear to be so elaborate as other contemporaries, both older and younger, but he grasped a just way of expressing things with it, and for the most part the fit things to say. The impression he made upon musical people in all parts of the musical world was strong, and he was long regarded as the most delightful of composers in his particular line; and though the professors of his day did not always hold him in so high estimation, his influence upon many of his most distinguished successors was unquestionably powerful.
It is possible, however, that appearances are deceptive, and that influences of which he was only the most familiar exponent, are mistaken for his peculiar achievement. Thus knowing his position at the head of a great school of violinists, which continued through several generations down to Haydn's time, it is difficult to disunite him from the honour of having fixed the type of sonata which they almost uniformly adopted. And not only this noble and vigorous school, comprising such men as Tartini, Vivaldi, Locatelli, Nardini, Veracini, and outlying members like Léclair and Rust, but men who were not specially attached to their violins, such as Albinoni and Purcell, and later, Bach, Handel and Porpora, equally adopted the type. Of Albinoni not much seems to be distinctly known, except that he was Corelli's contemporary and probably junior. He wrote operas and instrumental music. Of the latter, several sonatas are still to be seen, but they are, of course, not familiar, though at one time they enjoyed a wide popularity. The chief point about them is that in many for violin and figured bass he follows not only the same general outlines, but even the style of Corelli. He adopts the four-movement plan, with a decided canzona in the second place, a slow movement first and third, and a quick movement to end with, such as in one case a Corrente. Purcell's having followed Corelli's lead is repudiated by enthusiasts; but at all events the lines of his Golden Sonata in F are wonderfully similar. There are three slow movements, which come first, second, and fourth; the third movement is actually called a Canzona; and the last is a quick movement in 3-8 time, similar in style to corresponding portions of Corelli's Sonatas. The second movement, an Adagio, is the most expressive, being happily devised on the principle above referred to, of repeating a short figure in different positions throughout the movement. In respect of sonata-form the work is about on a par with the average of Corelli or Biber.
The domain of Sonata was for a long while ​almost monopolised by violinists and writers for the violin. Some of these, such as Geminiani and Locatelli, were actually Corelli's pupils. They clearly followed him both in style and structural outlines, but they also began to extend and build upon them with remarkable speed. The second movement continued for long the most stationary and conventional, maintaining the Canzona type in a loose fugal manner, by the side of remarkable changes in the other movements. Of these the first began to grow into larger dimensions and clearer proportions even in Corelli's own later works, attaining to the dignity of double bars and repeats, and with his successors to a consistent and self-sufficing form. An example of this is the admirable Larghetto affettuoso with which Tartini's celebrated 'Trillo del Diavolo' commences. No one who has heard it could fail to be struck with the force of the simple device above described of making the ends of each half correspond, as the passage is made to stand out from all the rest more characteristically than usual. A similar and very good example is the introductory Largo to the Sonata in G minor, for violin and figured bass, by Locatelli, which is given in Ferdinand David's 'Hohe Schule des Violinspiels.' The subject-matter in both examples is exceedingly well handled, so that a sense of perfect consistency is maintained without concrete repetition of subjects, except, as already noticed, the closing bars of each half, which in Locatelli's Sonata are rendered less obvious through the addition of a short coda starting from a happy interrupted cadence. It is out of the question to follow the variety of aspects presented by the introductory slow movement; a fair proportion are on similar lines to the above examples, others are isolated. Their character is almost uniformly solid and large; they are often expressive, but generally in a way distinct from the character of the second slow movement, which from the first was chosen as the fittest to admit a vein of tenderer sentiment. The most important matter in the history of the Sonata at this period is the rapidity with which advance was made towards the realisation of modern harmonic and tonal principles of structure, or, in other words, the perception of the effect and significance of relations between chords and distinct keys, and consequent appearance of regularity of purpose in the distribution of both, and increased freedom of modulation. Even Corelli's own pupils show consistent form of the sonata kind with remarkable clearness. The last movement of a Sonata in C minor, by Geminiani, has a clear and emphatic subject to start with; modulation to the relative major, E♭, and special features to characterise the second section; and conclusion of the first half in that key, with repeat after the supposed orthodox manner. The second half begins with a long section corresponding to the working out or 'free fantasia' portion of a modern sonata movement, and concludes with recapitulation of the first subject and chief features of the second section in C minor; this latter part differing chiefly from modern ways by admitting a certain amount of discursiveness, which is characteristic of most of the early experiments in this form. Similar to this is the last movement of Locatelli's Sonata in G minor, the last movement of Veracini's Sonata in E minor, published at Vienna in 1714, the last movements of Tartini's Sonatas in E minor and D minor, and not a few others. It is rather curious that most of the early examples of what is sometimes called first-movement form are last movements. Most of these movements, however, in the early times, are distinguished by a peculiarity which is of some importance. It has been before referred to, but is so characteristic of the process of growth, that it will not be amiss to describe it in this place. The simple and almost homely means of producing the effect of structural balance by making the beginning and ending of each half of a movement correspond, is not so conspicuously common in its entirety as the correspondence of endings or repetition of cadence bars only; but it nevertheless is found tolerably often, and that in times before the virtue of a balance of keys in the first half of the movement had been decisively realised. When, however, this point was gained, it is clear that such a process would give, on as minute a scale as possible, the very next thing to complete modern binary form. It only needed to expand the opening passage into a first subject, and the figures of the Cadence into a second subject, to attain that type which became almost universal in sonatas till Haydn's time, and with some second-rate composers, like Reichart, later. The movements which are described as binary must be therefore divided into two distinct classes:—that in which the first subject reappears in the complementary key at the beginning of the second half, which is the almost universal type of earlier times; and that in which it appears in the latter part of the movement, after the working-out portion, which is the later type. The experiments in Corelli and Tartini, and others who are close to these types, are endless. Sometimes there are tentative strokes near to the later form; sometimes there is an inverted order reproducing the second portion of the movement first. Sometimes the first subject makes its appearance at both points, but then, may be, there is no balance of keys in the first half, and so forth. The variety is extraordinary, and it is most interesting to watch the manner in which some types by degrees preponderate, sometimes by combining with one another, sometimes by gradual transformation, come nearer and more decisively like the types which are generally adopted in modern times as fittest. The later type was not decisively fixed on at any particular point, for many early composers touched it once or twice at the same period that they were writing movements in more elementary forms. The point of actual achievement of a step in art is not marked by an isolated instance, but by decisive preponderance, and by the systematic adoption which shows at least an instinctive realisation of its value and importance.
​These writers of violin sonatas were just touching on the clear realisation of harmonic form as accepted in modern times, and they sometimes adopted the later type, though rarely, and that obscurely; they mastered the earlier type, and used it freely; and they also used the intermediate type which combines the two, in which the principal or first subject makes its appearance both at the beginning of the first half and near the end, where a modern would expect it. As a sort of embryonic suggestion of this, the Tempo di Gavotta, in the eighth Sonata of Corelli's Opera Seconda, is significant. Complete examples are—the last movement of Tartini's fourth Sonata of Opus 1, and the last movement of that in D minor above referred to; the last movement of Geminiani's Sonata in C minor; the main portion, excluding the Coda, of the Corrente in Vivaldi's Sonata in A major; the last movement of a Sonata of Nardini's, in D major; and two Capriccios in B♭ and C, by Franz Benda, quoted in F. David's 'Hohe Schule,' etc.
The four-movement type of violin sonata was not invariably adopted, though it preponderates so conspicuously. There is a set of twelve sonatas by Locatelli, for instance, not so fine as that in F. David's collection, which are nearly all on an original three-movement plan, concluding with an 'Aria' and variations on a ground-bass. Some of Tartini's are also in three movements, and a set of six by Nardini are also in three, but always beginning with a slow movement, and therefore, though almost of the same date, not really approaching the distribution commonly adopted by Haydn for Clavier Sonatas. In fact the old Violin Sonata is in many respects a distinct genus, which maintained its individuality alongside the gradually stereotyped Clavier Sonata, and only ceased when that type obtained possession of the field, and the violin was reintroduced, at first as it were furtively, as an accompaniment to the pianoforte. The general characteristics of this school of writers for the violin, were nobility of style and richness of feeling, an astonishing mastery of the instrument, and a rapidly-growing facility in dealing with structure in respect of subject, key, modulation and development; and what is most vital, though less obvious, a perceptible growth in the art of expression and a progress towards the definition of ideas. As a set-off there are occasional traces of pedantic manners, and occasional crudities both of structure and expression, derived probably from the associations of the old music which they had so lately left behind them. At the crown of the edifice are the Sonatas of J. S. Bach. Of sonatas in general he appears not to have held to any decisive opinion. He wrote many for various instruments, and for various combinations of instruments. For clavier, for violin alone, for flute, violin, and clavier, for viol da gamba and clavier, and so on; but in most of these the outlines are not decisively distinct from Suites. In some cases the works are described as 'Sonatas or Suites,' and in at least one case the introduction to a church cantata is called a Sonata. Some instrumental works which are called Sonatas only, might quite as well be called Suites, as they consist of a prelude and a set of dance-tunes. Others are heterogeneous. From this it appears that he had not satisfied himself on what lines to attack the Sonata in any sense approaching the modern idea. With the Violin Sonatas it was otherwise; and in the group of six for violin and clavier he follows almost invariably the main outlines which are characteristic of the Italian school descended from Corelli, and all but one are on the four-movement plan, having slow movements first and third, and quick movements second and fourth. The sixth Sonata only differs from the rest by having an additional quick movement at the beginning. Not only this but the second movements keep decisively the formal lineaments of the ancient type of free fugue, illustrated with more strictness of manner by the Canzonas. Only in calibre and quality of ideas, and in some peculiar idiosyncrasies of structure do they differ materially from the works of the Italian masters. Even the first, third, and fifth Sonatas in the other set of six, for violin alone, conform accurately to the old four-movement plan, including the fugue in the second place; the remaining three being on the general lines of the Suite. In most of the Sonatas for violin and clavier, the slow movement is a tower of strength, and strikes a point of rich and complex emotional expression which music reached for the first time in Bach's imagination. His favourite way of formulating a movement of this sort, was to develop the whole accompaniment consistently on a concise and strongly-marked figure, which by repetition in different conditions formed a bond of connection throughout the whole; and on this he built a passionate kind of recitative, a free and unconstrained outpouring of the deepest and noblest instrumental song. This was a sort of apotheosis of that form of rhapsody, which has been noticed in the early Sonatas, such as Biber's and Kuhnau's, and was occasionally attempted by the Italians. The six Sonatas present diversities of types, all of the loftiest order; some of them combining together with unfailing expressiveness perfect specimens of old forms of contrapuntal ingenuity. Of this, the second movement of the second Sonata is a perfect example. It appears to be a pathetic colloquy between the violin and the treble of the clavier part, to which the bass keeps up the slow constant motion of staccato semiquavers: the colloquy at the same time is in strict canon throughout, and, as a specimen of expressive treatment of that time-honoured form, is almost unrivalled.
In all these movements the kinship is rather with the contrapuntal writers of the past, than with the types of Beethoven's adoption. Even Bach, immense as his genius and power of divination was, could not leap over that period of formation which it seems to have been indispensable for mankind to pass through, before equally ​noble and deeply-felt things could be expressed in the characteristically modern manner. Though he looked further into the future in matters of expression and harmonic combination than any composer till the present century, he still had to use forms of the contrapuntal and fugal order for the expression of his highest thoughts. He did occasionally make use of binary form, though not in these Sonatas. But he more commonly adopted, and combined with more or less fugal treatment, an expansion of simple primary form to attain structural effect. Thus, in the second movements of the first and second Sonatas, in the last of the third and sixth, and the first of the sixth, he marks first a long complete section in his principal key, then takes his way into modulations and development, and discussion of themes and various kinds of contrapuntal enjoyment, and concludes with simple complete recapitulation of the first section in the principal key. Bach thus stands singularly aside from the direct line of the development of the Sonata as far as the structural elements are concerned. His contributions to the art of expression, to the development of resource, and to the definition and treatment of ideas had great effect, and are of the very highest importance to instrumental music; but his almost invariable choice of either the suite-form, or the accepted outlines of the violin sonata, in works of this class, caused him to diverge into a course which with him found its final and supreme limit. In order to continue the work in veins which were yet unexhausted, the path had to be turned a little, and joined to courses which were coming up from other directions. The violin sonata continued to make its appearance here and there as has already been mentioned, but in the course of a generation it was entirely supplanted by the distinct type of clavier sonata.
Meanwhile there was another composer of this time, who appears to stand just as singularly apart from the direct high road as Bach, and who, though he does not occupy a pedestal so high in the history of art, still has a niche by no means low or inconspicuous, and one which he shares with no one. Domenico Scarlatti was Bach's senior by a few years, though not enough to place him in an earlier musical generation; and in fact though his works are so different in quality, they have the stamp that marks them as belonging to the same parallel of time.
His most valuable contributions are in the immense number of sonatas and studies which he wrote for the harpsichord. The distinction between Study and Sonata is not clearly marked with him; it looks as if one included the other in most cases, for the structure and style vary very little, and not necessarily or systematically at all, between one and the other. But whatever they are called they do not correspond in appearance to any form which is commonly supposed to be essential to the Sonata. Neither can they be taken as pure-bred members of the fugal family, nor do they trace their origins to the Suite. They are in fact, in a fair proportion of cases, an attempt to deal with direct ideas in a modern sense, without appealing to the glamour of conscious association, the dignity of science, or the familiarity of established dance rhythms. The connection with what goes before and with what comes after is alike obscure, because of the daring originality with which existing materials are worked upon; but it is not the less inevitably present, as an outline of his structural principles will show.
His utterance is at its best sharp and incisive; the form in which he loves to express himself is epigrammatic; and some of his most effective sonatas are like strings of short propositions bound together by an indefinable sense of consistency and consequence, rather than by actual development. These ideas are commonly brought home to the hearer by the singular practice of repeating them consecutively as they stand, often several times over; in respect of which it is worth remembering that his position in relation to his audience was not unlike that of an orator addressing an uncultivated mob. The capacity for appreciating grand developments of structure was as undeveloped in them as the power of following widely-spread argument and conclusion would be in the mob. And just as the mob-orator makes his most powerful impressions by short direct statements, and by hammering them in while still hot from his lips, so Scarlatti drove his points home by frequent and generally identical reiterations; and then when the time came round to refer to them again, the force of the connection between distant parts of the same story was more easily grasped. The feeling that he did this with his eyes open is strengthened by the fact that even in the grouping of the reiterations there is commonly a perceptible method. For instance, it can hardly be by accident that at a certain point of the movement, after several simple repetitions, he should frequently resort to the complication of repeating several small groups within the repetition of large ones. The following example is a happy illustration of his style, and of his way of elaborating such repetitions.
​ It must not be supposed that he makes a law of this procedure, but the remarkably frequent occurrence of so curious a device is certainly suggestive of conscious purpose in structural treatment. The result of this mode is that the movements often appear to be crowded with ideas. Commonly the features of the opening bars, which in modern times would be held of almost supreme importance, serve for very little except to determine the character of the movement, and often never make their appearance again. On the other hand he carries the practice before referred to, of making the latter part of each half of the movement correspond, to an extraordinary pitch, and with perfect success; for he almost invariably adopts the key distribution of binary form in its main outlines; and though it would not be accurate to speak of such a thing as a 'second subject' in his sonatas, the impression produced by his distribution of repetition and the clearness of his ideas is sufficient, in his best movements, to give a general structural effect very similar to complete binary form on a small scale. In order to realise to what extent the process of recapitulation is carried by him, it will be as well to consider the outline of a fairly characteristic sonata. That which stands fifteenth in the easily available edition of Breitkopf & Härtel commences with eight bars only in E minor; the next forty-six, barring merely a slight and unimportant digression, are in G major. This concludes the first half. The second half begins with reference to the opening figures of the whole and a little key digression, and then a characteristic portion of the second section of the first half is resumed, and the last thirty-four bars of the movement are a recapitulation in E minor of the last thirty-five of the first half, the three concluding bars being condensed into two.
In many respects his principles of structure and treatment are altogether in the direction of modern ways, and alien to fugal principles. That vital principle of the fugue—the persistence of one principal idea, and the interweaving of it into every part of the structure—appears completely alien to Scarlatti's disposition. He very rarely wrote a fugue; and when he did, if it was successful that was less because it was a good fugue than because it was Scarlatti's. The fact that he often starts with imitation between two parts is unimportant, and the merest accident of association. He generally treats his ideas as concrete lumps, and disposes them in distinct portions of the movement, which is essentially an unfugal proceeding; but the most important matter is that he was probably the first to attain to clear conception and treatment of a self-sufficing effective idea, and to use it, if without science, yet with management which is often convincingly successful. He was not a great master of the art of composition, but he was one of the rarest masters of his instrument; and his divination of the way to treat it, and the perfect adaptation of his ideas to its requirements, more than counterbalance any shortcoming in his science. He was blessed with ideas, and with a style so essentially his own, that even when his music is transported to another instrument the characteristic effects of tone often remain unmistakeable. Vivacity, humour, genuine fun, are his most familiar traits. At his best his music sparkles with life and freshness, and its vitality is apparently quite unimpaired by age. He rarely approaches tenderness or sadness, and in the whole mass of his works there are hardly any slow movements. He is not a little 'bohemian,' and seems positively to revel in curious effects of consecutive fifths and consecutive octaves. The characteristic daring of which such things are the most superficial manifestations, joined with the clearness of his foresight, made him of closer kinship to Beethoven and Weber, and even Brahms, than to the typical contrapuntalists of his day. His works are genuine 'sonatas' in the most radical sense of the term—self-dependent and self-sufficing sound-pieces, without programme. To this the distribution of movements is at least of secondary importance, and his confining himself to one alone does not vitiate his title to be a foremost contributor to that very important branch of the musical art. No successor was strong enough to wield his bow. His pupil Durante wrote some sonatas, consisting of a Studio and a Divertimento apiece, which have touches of his manner, but without sufficient of the nervous elasticity to make them important.
The contemporary writers for clavier of second rank do not offer much which is of high musical interest, and they certainly do not arrive at anything like the richness of thought and expression which is shown by their fellows of the violin. There appears however amongst them a tendency to drop the introductory slow movement characteristic of the violin sonata, and by that means to draw nearer to the type of later clavier or pianoforte sonatas. Thus a sonata of Wagenseil's in F major presents almost exactly the general outlines to be met with in Haydn's works—an Allegro assai in binary form of the old type, a short Andantino grazioso, and a Tempo di Minuetto. A sonata of Hasse's in D minor has a similar arrangement of three movements ending with a Gigue; but the first movement is utterly vague and indefinite in form. There is also an Allegro of Hasse's in B♭, quoted in Pauer's ​Alte Meister, which deserves consideration for the light it throws on a matter which is sometimes said to be a crucial distinction between the early attempts at form and the perfect achievement. In many of the early examples of sonata-form, the second section of the first part is characterised by groups of figures which are quite definite enough for all reasonable purposes, but do not come up to the ideas commonly entertained of the nature of a subject; and on this ground the settlement of sonata-form was deferred some fifty years. Hasse was not a daring originator, neither was he likely to strike upon a crucial test of perfection, yet in this movement he sets out with a distinct and complete subject in B♭ of a robust Handelian character:—
and after the usual extension proceeds to F, and announces by definite emphasis on the Dominant the well-contrasted second subject, which is suggestive of the polite reaction looming in the future:—
The movement as a whole is in the binary type of the earlier kind.
The period now approaching is characterised by uncertainty in the distribution of the movements, but increasing regularity and definition in their internal structure. Some writers follow the four-movement type of violin sonata in writing for the clavier; some strike upon the grouping of three movements; and a good many fall back upon two. A sonata of Galuppi's in D illustrates the first of these, and throws light upon the transitional process. The first movement is a beautiful Adagio of the Arioso type, with the endings of each half corresponding, after the manner traced from Corelli; the second is an Allegro not of the fugal or Canzona order, but clear binary of the older kind. A violin sonata of Locatelli's, of probably earlier date, has an Allemande of excellent form in this position, but this is not sufficiently definite in the inference it affords to throw much light on any transition or assimilation of violin sonata-form to clavier sonata-form. Galuppi's adoption of a movement of clear sonata-qualities in this place supplies exactly the link that was needed; and the fugal or canzona type of movement being so supplanted, nothing further was necessary but expansion, and the omission of the introductory Adagio (which probably was not so well adapted to the earlier keyed instruments as to the violin), to arrive at the principle of distribution adopted in the palmiest days of formalism. Later, with a more powerful instrument, the introductory slow movement was often reintroduced. Galuppi's third movement is in a solid march style, and the last is a Giga. All of them are harmonically constructed, and the whole work is solid and of sterling musical worth.
Dr. Arne was born only four years after Galuppi, and was amenable to the same general influences. The structure of his sonatas emphasises the fact above mentioned, that though the order of movements was passing through a phase of uncertainty their internal structure was growing more and more distinct and uniform. His first sonata, in F, has two movements, Andante and Allegro, both of which follow harmonically the lines of binary form. The second, in E minor, has three movements, Andante, Adagio, Allegrissimo. The first and last are on the binary lines, and the middle one in simple primary form. The third Sonata consists of a long vague introduction of arpeggios, elaborated in a manner characteristic of the time, an Allegro which has only one subject but is on the binary lines, and a Minuet and two Variations. The fourth Sonata is in some respects the most interesting. It consists of an Andante, Siciliano, Fuga, and Allegro. The first is of continuous character but nevertheless in binary form, without the strong emphasis on the points of division between the sections. It deserves notice for its expressiveness and clearness of thought. The second movement is very short, but pretty and expressive, of a character similar to examples of Handel's tenderer moods. The last movement is particularly to be noticed, not only for being decisively in binary form, but for the ingenuity with which that form is manipulated. The first section is represented by the main subject in the treble, the second (which is clearly marked in the dominant key) has the same subject in the bass, a device adopted also more elaborately by W. Friedemann Bach. The second half begins with consistent development and modulation, and the recapitulation is happily managed by making the main subject represent both sections at once in a short passage of canon. Others of Arne's sonatas afford similar though less clear examples which it is superfluous to consider in detail, for neither the matter nor the handling is so good in them as in those above described, most of which, though not rich in thought or treatment, nor impressive ​in character, have genuine traits of musical expression and clearness of workmanship.
In the same year with Dr. Arne was born Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the eldest son of John Sebastian. He was probably the most gifted, the most independent, and unfortunately the wildest and most unmanageable of that remarkable family. Few of his compositions are known, and it is said that he would not take the trouble to write unless he was driven to it. Two sonatas exist, which are of different type, and probably represent different periods of his chequered career. One in D major, for its richness, elaborateness, expressiveness, is well worthy of the scion of so great a stock; the other is rather cheap, and though masterly in handling and disposition of structural elements, has more traces of the elegance which was creeping over the world of music than of the grave and earnest nobleness of his father and similar representatives of the grand period. The first, in D, is probably the most remarkable example, before Beethoven, of original ingenuity manipulating sonata-form under the influence of fugal associations and by means of contrapuntal devices. The whole is worked out with careful and intelligible reasoning, but to such an elaborate extent that it is quite out of the question to give even a complete outline of its contents. The movements are three—Un poco allegro, Adagio, Vivace. The first and last are speculative experiments in binary form. The first half in each represents the balance of expository sections in tonic and complementary keys. The main subject of the first reappears in the bass in the second section, with a new phase of the original accompaniment in the upper parts. The development portion is in its usual place, but the recapitulation is tonally reversed. The first subject and section is given in a relative key to balance the complementary key of the second section, and the second section is given in the original key or tonic of the movement; so that instead of repeating one section and transposing the other in recapitulation, they are both transposed analogously. In each of the three movements the ends of the halves correspond, and not only this but the graceful little figure appended to the cadence is the same in all the movements, establishing thereby a very delicate but sensible connection between them. This figure is as follows:—
The formal pauses on familiar points of harmony characteristic of later times are conspicuously few, the main divisions being generally marked by more subtle means. The whole sonata is so uncompromisingly full of expressive figures, and would require to be so elaborately phrased and 'sung' to be intelligible, that an adequate performance would be a matter of considerable difficulty. The second Sonata, in C, has quite a different appearance. It is also in three movements—Allegro, Grave, and Vivace. The first is a masterly, clear and concise example of binary form of the type which is more familiar in the works of Haydn and Mozart. The second is an unimportant intermezzo leading directly into the Finale, which is also in binary form of the composite type. The treatment is the very reverse of the previous sonata. It is not contrapuntal, nor fugal. Little pains are taken to make the details expressive; and the only result of using a bigger and less careful brush is to reduce the interest to a minimum, and to make the genuineness of the utterances seem doubtful, because the writer appears not to have taken the trouble to express his best thoughts.
Wilhelm Friedemann's brother, Carl Philip Emmanuel, his junior by a few years, was the member of the younger family who attained the highest reputation as a representative composer of instrumental music and a writer on that subject. His celebrity is more particularly based on the development of sonata-form, of which he is often spoken of as the inventor. True, his sonatas and writings obtained considerable celebrity, and familiarity induced people to remark things they had overlooked in the works of other composers. But in fact he is neither the inventor nor the establisher of sonata-form. It was understood before his day, both in details and in general distribution of movements. One type obtained the reputation of supreme fitness later, but it was not nearly always adopted by Haydn, nor invariably by Mozart, and was consistently departed from by Beethoven; and Emmanuel did not restrict himself to it; yet his predecessors used it often. It is evident therefore that his claims to a foremost place rest upon other grounds. Among these, most prominent is his comprehension and employment of the art of playing and expressing things on the clavier. He understood it, not in a new sense, but in one which was nearer to public comprehension than the treatment of his father. He grasped the phase to which it had arrived, by constant development in all quarters; he added a little of his own, and having a clear and ready-working brain, he brought it home to ​the musical public in a way they had not felt before. His influence was paramount to give a decided direction to clavier-playing, and it is possible that the style of which he was the foster-father passed on continuously to the masterly treatment of the pianoforte by Clementi, and through him to the culminating achievements of Beethoven.
In respect of structure, most of his important sonatas are in three movements, of which the first and last are quick, and the middle one slow; and this is a point by no means insignificant in the history of the sonata, as it represents a definite and characteristic balance between the principal divisions, in respect of style and expression as well as in the external traits of form. Many of these are in clear binary form, like those of his elder brother, and his admirable predecessor, yet to be noted, P. Domenico Paradies. He adopts sometimes the old type, dividing the recapitulation in the second half of the movement; sometimes the later, and sometimes the composite type. For the most part he is contented with the opportunities for variety which this form supplies, and casts a greater proportion of movements in it than most other composers, even to the extent of having all movements in a work in different phases of the same form, which in later times was rare. On the other hand, he occasionally experiments in structures as original as could well be devised. There is a Sonata in F minor which has three main divisions corresponding to movements. The first, an Allegro, approaches vaguely to binary form; the second, an Adagio, is in rough outline like simple primary form, concluding with a curious barless cadenza; the last is a Fantasia of the most elaborate and adventurous description, full of experiments in modulation, enharmonic and otherwise, changes of time, abrupt surprises and long passages entirely divested of bar lines. There is no definite subject, and no method in the distribution of keys. It is more like a rhapsodical improvisation of a most inconsequent and unconstrained description than the product of concentrated purpose, such as is generally expected in a sonata movement. This species of experiment has not survived in high-class modern music, except in the rarest cases. It was however not unfamiliar in those days, and superb examples in the same spirit were provided by John Sebastian, such as the Fantasia Cromatica, and parts of some of the Toccatas. John Ernst Bach also left something more after the manner of the present instance as the prelude to a fugue. Emmanuel Bach's position is particularly emphasised as the most prominent composer of sonatas of his time, who clearly shows the tendency of the new counter-current away from the vigour and honest comprehensiveness of the great school of which his father was the last and greatest representative, towards the elegance, polite ease, and artificiality, which became the almost indispensable conditions of the art in the latter part of the 18th century. Fortunately the process of propping up a tune upon a dummy accompaniment, was not yet accepted universally as a desirable phenomenon of high-class instrumental music; in fact such a stride downward in one generation would have been too cataclystic; so he was spared the temptation of shirking honest concentration, and padding his works, instead of making them thoroughly complete; and the result is a curious combination, sometimes savouring strongly of his father's style—
and sometimes coldly predicting the style of the future—
In general, his building up of movements is full of expressive detail, and he does not spare himself trouble in enriching his work with such things as ingenuity, genuine musical perception and vivacity of thought can suggest. He occasionally reaches a point of tenderness and poetic sensibility which is not unworthy of his descent, but there is also sometimes an uncomfortable premonition in his slow movements of the posturing and posing which were soon to be almost inevitable in well-bred Adagios. The spirit is indeed not greatly deep and earnest, but in outward things the attainment of a rare degree of point and emphasis, and of clearness and certainty in construction without emptiness, sufficed to give Philip Emmanuel a foremost place among the craftsmen of the art.
P. Domenico Paradies was Emmanuel Bach's senior by a few years. Two of his sonatas, at least, are deservedly well known to musicians. The structural qualities shown by the whole set of twelve, emphasise the opinion that binary form was familiar to composers of this period. They differ from Philip Emmanuel's chiefly in consisting uniformly of two movements only. Of these, the first movements are almost invariably in binary form. That of the I st sonata is perfectly complete and of the later type; many of the others are of the early type. Some details in the distribution of the movements are worth noticing. Thus the last movement of No. 4 is a very graceful and pretty minuet, which had hitherto not been so ​common an ingredient in sonatas as it afterwards became. The last movement of No. 3 is called an aria; the arrangement of parts of which, as well as that of the last movement of No. 9, happens to produce a rondo, hitherto an extremely rare feature. His formulation and arrangement of subjects is extremely clear and masterly, and thoroughly in the sonata manner—that is, essentially harmonical. In character he leans towards the style of the latter part of the 18th century, but has a grace and sincerity which is thoroughly his own. In a few cases, as in the last movements of the Sonatas in A and D, Nos. 6 and 10, which are probably best known of all, the character assumed is rather of the bustling and hearty type which is suggestive of the influence of Scarlatti. In detail they are not so rich as the best specimens of Emmanuel's, or of Friedemann Bach's workmanship; but they are thoroughly honest and genuine all through, and thoroughly musical, and show no sign of shuffling or laziness.
The two-movement form of clavier sonata, of which Paradies's are probably the best examples, seems to have been commonly adopted by a number of composers of second and lower rank, from his time till far on in the century. Those of Durante have been already mentioned. All the set of eight, by Domenico Alberti, are also in this form, and so are many by such forgotten contributors as Roeser and Barthelemon, and some by the once popular Schobert. Alberti is credited with the doubtful honour of having invented a formula of accompaniment which became a little too familiar in the course of the century, and is sometimes known as the 'Alberti Bass.' This specimen is from his 2nd Sonata.
He may not have invented it, but he certainly called as much attention to it as he could, since not one of his eight sonatas is without it, and in some movements it continues almost throughout. The movements approach occasionally to binary form, but are not clearly defined; the matter is for the most part dull in spirit, and poor in sound; and the strongest characteristic is the unfortunate one of hitting upon a cheap device, which was much in vogue with later composers of mark, without having arrived at that mastery and definition of form and subject which alone made it endurable. The times were not quite ripe for such usages, and it is fortunate for Paradies, who was slightly Alberti's junior, that he should have attained to a far better definition of structure without resorting to such cheapening.
There are two other composers of this period who deserve notice for maintaining, even later, some of the dignity and nobility of style which were now falling into neglect, together with clearness of structure and expressiveness of detail. These are Rolle and George Benda. A sonata of the former's in E♭ shows a less certain hand in the treatment of form, but at times extraordinary gleams of musically poetic feeling. Points in the Adagio are not unworthy of kinship with Beethoven. It contains broad and daring effects of modulation, and noble richness of sentiment and expression, which, by the side of the obvious tendencies of music in these days, is really astonishing. The first and last movements are in binary form of the old type, and contain some happy and musical strokes, though not so remarkable as the contents of the slow movement. George Benda was a younger and greater brother of the Franz who has been mentioned in connection with Violin Sonatas. He was one of the last writers who, using the now familiar forms, still retained some of the richness of the earlier manner. There is in his work much in the same tone and style as that of Emmanuel Bach, but also an earnestness and evident willingness to get the best out of himself and to deal with things in an original manner, such as was by this time becoming rare. After him, composers of anything short of first rank offer little to arrest attention either for individuality in treatment or earnestness of expression. The serious influences which had raised so many of the earlier composers to a point of memorable musical achievement were replaced by associations of far less genuine character, and the ease with which something could be constructed in the now familiar forms of sonata, seduced men into indolent uniformity of structure and commonplace prettiness in matter. Some attained to evident proficiency in the use of instrumental resource, such as Turini; and some to a touch of genuine though small expressiveness, as Haessler and Grazioli; for the rest the achievements of Sarti, Sacchini, Schobert, Méhul, and the otherwise great Cherubini, in the line of sonata, do not offer much that requires notice. They add nothing to the process of development, and some of them are remarkably behindhand in relation to their time, and both what they say and the manner of it is equally unimportant.
Midway in the crowd comes the conspicuous form of Haydn, who raised upon the increasingly familiar structural basis not only some fresh and notable work of the accepted sonata character, but the great and enduring monument of his symphonies and quartets. The latter do not fall within the limits of the present subject, though they are in reality but the great instrumental expansion of this kind of music for solo instruments. An arbitrary restriction has been put upon the meaning of the word Sonata, and it is necessary here to abide by it. With Haydn it is rather sonata-form which is important, than the works which fall under the conventional acceptation of the name. His sonatas are many, but they are of exceedingly diverse value, and very few of really great importance. As is the case with his quartets, some, which internal evidence would be sufficient to mark as early attempts, are curiously innocent and elementary; and even throughout, with a few exceptions, their proportionate value is not equal to that of other classes ​of his numerous works. But the great span of his musical activity, reaching from the times of the Bach family till fairly on in Beethoven's mature years, the changes in the nature of keyed instruments, and the development of their resources which took place during his lifetime, make it inevitable that there should be a marked difference in the appearance and limits of different members of the collection. However, he is always himself, and though the later works are wider and more richly expressed, they represent the same mental qualities as the earliest. At all times his natural bent is in favour of simplification, as against the old contrapuntal modes of expression. His easy good-humour speaks best in simple but often ingeniously balanced tunes and subjects, and it is but rare that he has recourse to polyphonic expression or to the kind of idea which calls for it. Partly on this account and partly on account of narrowness of capacity in the instrument to which in solo sonatas he gave most attention, his range of technical resource is not extensive, and he makes but little demand upon his performers. His use of tunes and decisively outlined subjects is one of the most important points in relation to structure at this period. Tunes had existed in connection with words for centuries, and it is to their association with verses balanced by distinct rhythmic grouping of lines, that the sectional tune of instrumental music must ultimately be traced. It appears not to be a genuine instrumental product, but an importation; and the fact that almost all the most distinguished composers were connected with opera establishments, just at the time that the tune-element became most marked in instrumental works, supports the inference that the opera was the means through which a popular element ultimately passed into the great domain of abstract music. In preceding times the definition of subject by hard outlines and systematic conformity to a few normal successions of harmony was not universal; and the adoption of tunes was rare. In Haydn and Mozart the culmination of regularity in the building of subject is reached. The virtue of this process is that it simplifies the conditions of structure in the whole movement. When a correct system of centralisation is found by which the subject is restrained within the limits which strictly illustrate but one single tonality, the feelings which this suggests to the hearer are such as will be satisfied with equally simple order in all other parts of the complete structure. If the creative power is not sufficiently concentrated and disciplined to restrain the direction of its activity within comprehensible bounds, the result can only be to make perfect balance and proportion impossible. Thus if the first section of a movement is so decentralised that its connection with any particular key cannot possibly be followed by the hearer, one of the primary conditions of abstract music has been violated, and the balance of parts rendered undistinguishable. Yet the subject or section may range broadly in its course, and touch upon many alien tonalities without violating these conditions; but then the horizon is broadened so as to necessitate an equal relative extension in every part of the movement. If a poet sets out with a passage expanded to the full with imagery and implication, in which almost every word is suggestive of wide horizons of thought, and carries inference behind it as complicated as those which lie in simple external manifestations of nature, it is useless for him to go back afterwards to a more limited and statuesque mode of expression. Even a person of little cultivation would feel at once the violation of artistic proportion. A relative degree of heat and intensity must be maintained at the risk of the work being as a whole unendurable. But if a more restricted field of imagination be appealed to at the outset, the work may be the more easily and perfectly carried out in simpler and narrower limits. In abstract music, balance, proportion, equality in the range of emotional and structural elements, are some of the most important conditions. Not that there is to be equal intensity all through, but that the salient and subordinate parts shall be fairly proportionate; and this cannot be tested or stated by formulas of science, but only by cultivated artistic instinct. In music the art of expressing an idea within the limits and after the manner necessary for abstract music had to be discovered. The process of selection from experimental types had brought this to the closest point consistent with completeness in the latter half of the 18th century. At that time the disposition of the musical mind was specially set upon obviously intelligible order and certainty in the structural aspect of works. It was a necessary condition for art to go through; and though not by any means the sole or supreme condition of excellence, it is not strange that the satisfaction derived from the sense of its achievement should cause people, in social circumstances which were peculiarly favourable, to put disproportionate stress upon it; and that modern writers who have not been able to keep pace with the inevitable march and change in the conditions of musical utterance should still insist on it as if it were the ultimate aim of art: whereas in fact its prominence in that epoch was a passing phase having considerable dependence upon unique social conditions, and its existence in art at any time is only one of numberless constituent elements. The condition of art of that time enabled the greatest composers to express the utmost of their ideas, and to satisfy their audiences, within the limits of a very simple group of harmonies. And this simplified the whole process of building their works to the utmost. Haydn manipulates the resources which lie within such limits to admiration. Hardly any composer so successfully made uniformity out of compounded diversity on a small scale. He delights in making the separate limbs of a subject of different lengths, and yet, out of their total sum, attaining a perfect and convincing symmetry. The harmonic progression of the subjects is uniformly obedient to the principles of a form which is on a preconceived plan, and without some such device ​the monotony of well-balanced phrases must soon have become wearisome. With regard to the actual distribution of the movements, Haydn does not depart from that already familiar in the works of earlier composers. Out of 40 sonatas, comprising works for pianoforte alone, for pianoforte with accompaniment, and some adaptations, 10 have only two movements, 29 have three, and only one has four, this last comprising the only Scherzando in the whole collection of one hundred and eleven movements. Nearly all the first movements are in binary form with an occasional rondo; the last is often a rondo, more often in binary form, and occasionally a theme and variations. In the sonatas which have more than two movements, at least twice as many retain the old adagio as those which have the characteristic minuet and trio; but as a set-off, several of the sonatas either conclude with a dance form, or a rondo, or set of variations in the 'Tempo di Minuetto.'
The actual structure of the movements presents occasional peculiarities. In a few cases the pure old binary type, with repeat of first subject at the beginning of the second half, re-appears. A considerable number are in the composite form, in which the first subject makes two distinct reappearances in full in the second half, as before described. The two halves of the movement are generally, but not invariably, repeated—the first half almost invariably; in fact, the absence of the double bar in the middle of the Sonata in D major (no. 32 in Breitkopf & Härtel's edition) appears to be the only exception. The distribution of subjects in balancing keys appears to be absolutely without exception, as tonic and dominant, or tonic minor and relative major. Each movement has usually two distinct subjects, but occasionally, as is observable in Haydn's predecessors, the second is not strongly marked. In a few cases the same subject serves for both sections. There are a few examples of his anticipating Beethoven's usage of introducing clear accessory subjects to carry on the sections. Thus the above-mentioned Sonata in D major begins as follows:—
and after completing the period proceeds in the same key with this distinct accessory subject:
Haydn illustrates forcibly the usefulness of defining the main division of the movement, not only by emphasising the harmonic formula of the cadence, but by appending to it a characteristic phrase or figure, the position of which, immediately before the full stop, renders it particularly easy to recognise. The purpose and fitness of this has been already discussed. Haydn's cadence-figures are generally peculiarly attractive, and seem to be made so of set purpose. The following is one of the fullest and longest illustrations, from a Sonata in E♭:
As a rule the outlines of his binary movements are more persistently regular than those of his rondos. Haydn was the first composer of mark to adopt the rondo with frequency in sonatas. It had existed in isolation and in suites for a long while, and examples there are in plenty by Couperin and other early Frenchmen, who were much given to it; and also by various members of the Bach family, including the great John Sebastian. But hundreds of sonatas, from the highest to the lowest grade, may be taken at random with a fair probability of not finding a single example. The influence of the opera may probably be here traced again; in the set tunes and dance types as significantly as in the general structure. However, though Haydn's kind of rondo is peculiarly familiar and characteristic, he does not make use of the form in his sonatas nearly so proportionately often as later composers do. The proportion in comparison with Mozart is almost as one to two. The value and appropriateness of this form is a matter of opinion. The greatest masters have used it frequently, and Beethoven with the profoundest effect. The usage of some other composers may be fairly described as obtrusively obvious, and it lends itself with greater readiness than any other plan of its scope to frivolity and commonplace. Haydn's subjects are often singularly slight, but his development of the form is almost always ingenious. Thus he varies his disposition of the episodes, so that sometimes the main subject and a single episodical subject alternate in different circumstances throughout; at other times they are disposed so as to resemble the recapitulation in binary form. In the returns of the main theme he always exercises some consideration. In hardly any case does he simply repeat the theme as it stands throughout; commonly each reappearance is a fresh variation. Occasionally the middle repeats are variations, and the first and last statements simple and identical; and sometimes variations of theme and episode alternate. In all such points his readiness ​and energy are apparent, and make his treatment of the form a model in its particular line.
The slow movements of all the composers of sonatas till Beethoven's time are rather artificial and inclined to pose, owing partly to the weakness and want of sustaining power in their instruments. They contain too little of the deep and liberal feeling which is necessary to make the highest impression, and too much decorative finger-play, corresponding no doubt to the roulades and vocal gymnastics for which operatic singers found such admirable opportunities in the slow beats of adagios. Haydn's management of such things is artistic, and he occasionally strikes upon an interesting subject, but hardly any of the movements approach to the qualities expected in the ideal slow movement of modern times.
His distribution of the keys of the movements is simple. In some of the earlier Sonatas all three are in the same, or major and minor of the same key. In more mature examples he adopts the familiar antithesis of subdominant, which in later works preponderates so strongly. In one case he adopts a very unusual antithesis. This is in the largest and most elaborate of all the sonatas, of which the first and last movements are in E♭, and the middle movement in E♮.
One point requires notice in connection with his violin sonatas, viz. that they are the very reverse of those of the great school of half a century earlier; for inasmuch as with them the violin was everything, with Haydn it was next to nothing. Except in obviously late sonatas it does little more than timidly accompany the pianoforte. It was in this manner that the violin, having departed grandly by the front door in the old style, crept back again into modern instrumental music by the back. But small as such beginnings were, Haydn's later and fuller examples are the ostensible starting-point of a class of music which in the present century has extended the domain of the solo sonata, by enlarging its effective scope, and obtaining a new province for experiment in the combination of other instruments with the pianoforte upon equal terms, and with equal respect to their several idiosyncrasies.
John Christian Bach, the youngest son of John Sebastian, was Haydn's contemporary and junior by three years. In his day he was considered an important composer for the pianoforte, and his style is held to have had some influence upon Mozart. A sonata of his, in B♭, op. 17, is fluent and easily written, but not particularly interesting, and thoroughly in the style of the latter part of the 18th century. It consists of three movements, all in binary form of the older type. Another sonata, in C minor, is, for the date, in very singular form; beginning with a slow movement, having a fugue in the middle, and ending with a 'Tempo di Gavotta.' Its style is not strikingly massive, but there are many traits in it which show that his parentage was not entirely without influence. The fugue, though ably written, has too much of the hybrid effect common in such works, after the harmonic structural ideas had laid strong hold of men's minds, to be worthy of comparison with the genuine achievements of his father. The style of the work is broad, however, and some ideas and turns of expression may not unreasonably be taken to justify the influence attributed to him.
The difference of age between Haydn and Mozart was twenty-four years, but in this interval there was less change in the form of the sonata than might be expected. It was, in fact, an almost stationary period, when the attainment of satisfactory structural principles by the labours of a century and more of composers left men time to pause and contemplate what appeared to them to be perfection; the rhythmic wave of progress poised almost balanced for a short time before the rush which brought about an unexpected culmination in Beethoven.
The difference between Haydn and Mozart is plainly neither in structure nor altogether in style of thought and expression, but in advantages of temporal position. Haydn began nearer to the time of struggle and uncertainty. He found much ready to his hand, and he tested it and applied it, and improved it; and when Mozart came there was little to do but adapt his supreme gifts of fluency, clearness, and beauty of melody to glorify the edifice.
The progression of artistic instinct is at present an unexplained phenomenon; it can only be judged from observation that the children of a later generation are born with a predisposed facility to realise in perfect clearness the forms which preceding generations have been wanderingly and dimly striving after. It is possible that the affinity between genuine music and the mental conditions of the race is so close that the progress of the latter carries the former with it as part of the same organic development. At all events, Mozart was gifted with an extraordinary and hitherto unsurpassed instinct for formal perfection, and his highest achievements lie not more in the tunes which have so captivated the world, than in the perfect symmetry of his best works. Like Haydn, his ideas are naturally restricted within limits which simplify to the utmost the development of the form which follows from them. They move in such perfect obedience to the limits and outlines of the harmonic progressions which most certainly characterise the key, that the structural system becomes architecturally patent and recognisable to all listeners that have any understanding. In his time these formal outlines were fresh enough to bear a great deal of use without losing their sweetness; and Mozart used them with remarkable regularity. Out of thirty-six of his best-known sonatas, twenty-nine are in the now familiar order of three movements, and no less than thirty-three have the first movement in binary form. That binary form is moreover so regular, that the same pauses and the same successions of harmony, and the same occurrences of various kinds, may often be safely anticipated at the same point in the progress of the movements. He makes some use, often conspicuously, of the device of repeating short phrases ​consecutively, which has already been described in connection with Scarlatti's work. Thus in a Sonata in D major for Violin and Pianoforte, the first section of the first movement may be divided into seven distinct passages, each of which is severally repeated in some form or other consecutively. There are some peculiarities, such as the introduction of a new subject in the working-out portion of the work, instead of keeping consistently to development of the principal ideas; and the filling of the episodes of a rondo with a variety of different ideas, severally distinct; but as these points are not the precursors of further development, they are hardly worth discussing. It only requires to be pointed out that occasionally in pianoforte and other sonatas he makes experiments in novel distribution and entirely original manipulation of the structural elements of binary and other forms; which is sufficient to prove not only that he recognised the fitness of other outlines besides those that he generally adopted, but that he was capable of adapting himself to novel situations, if there had been any call for effort in that direction. As it happened, the circumstances both of musical and social life were unique, and he was enabled to satisfy the highest critical taste of his day without the effort of finding a new point of departure.
His treatment of rondo-form is different and less elementary than Haydn's. Haydn most commonly used a very decisively sectional system, in which every characteristic portion, especially the theme, was marked off distinct and complete. This accorded with the primitive idea of rondos as exemplified, often very happily, in the works of early French composers, and in certain forms of vocal music. The root-idea appears in the most elementary stages of musical intelligence as a distinct verse or tune which forms the staple of the whole matter, and is, for the sake of contrast, interspersed with digressions of subordinate interest. It is so obvious a means of arriving at something like structural balance, that it probably existed in times even before the earliest of which evidence remains. In the earliest specimens to be found in sonatas, the traces of their kinship can be clearly followed. Reference has been already made to the two examples in the sonatas by Paradies, which consist of an aria, a contrasting passage, and then the aria pure and simple again, and so forth. Haydn adopted the same general outline. He frequently begins with a complete theme systematically set out with double bars and repeats, and a full conclusion. He then begins something entirely different either in a new related key, or in the minor of the principal key, and makes a complete whole of that also, and so on right through, alternating his main tune with one or more others all equally complete. Under such circumstances his principle of giving variations at each return of the theme or repetition of an episode is almost indispensable to avoid monotony. Mozart rarely makes any point of this plan of adopting variations in his sonata-rondos, because it is not required. He does not often cast his theme in such extremely distinct outlines. In structure it is more what an ordinary binary subject would be; that is, complete and distinct in itself as an idea, without being so carried out as to make its connection with the rest of the movement a matter of secondary rather than intrinsic consequence. Haydn's conception is perfectly just and rational, but Mozart's is more mature. The theme and its episodes are more closely interwoven, and the development of the whole has a more consistent and uniform texture. Mozart does not avoid varying his theme; on the contrary, he constantly puts in the most delicate strokes of detail, and of graceful adornment, and sometimes resorts to delightfully ready development of its resources; but with him it is not so indispensable, because his conception of the form gives it so much more freedom and elasticity.
The central movement of his three-movement sonatas is almost invariably a slow one, commonly in the key of the subdominant. The style of these is characteristic of the time; that is, rather artificial and full of graces, which require to be given with a somewhat conscious elegance of manner, not altogether consonant with the spirit of later times. They rarely touch the point of feeling expected in modern movements of the kind, because the conception formed of the proper function of the slow movement in his time was clearly alien to that of the 19th century. As specimens of elegance and taste, however, Mozart's examples probably attain the highest point possible in their particular genus.
The technique of his sonatas, from the point of view of instrumental resource, is richer and fuller than Haydn's, but still thin and rather empty in sound to ears that are accustomed to the wonderful development of the resources of the modern pianoforte; but the refinement and self-containment of his style make him particularly acceptable to artists who idealise finish and elegance in solo performance, and nicety of ensemble in works for combined instruments, as the highest and most indispensable condition of art. His instinct for adapting his thoughts to instrumental idiosyncrasies was of a very high order when the instruments were familiar and properly developed. This with the pianoforte was not yet achieved, and consequently some of his forms of expression are hardly adapted to its nature, and seem in these days to be rather compromises than perfectly suitable utterances.
With regard to the technical matter of the development of the resources of the pianoforte, Mozart's contemporary, Muzio Clementi, occupies a most important position. Clementi, in his early days, according to his own admission, applied himself rather to the development of the resources of playing than to the matter to be played, and attained a degree and a kind of mastery which no one before his time had heard the like of. When he began to apply himself more to the matter, this study served him in good stead; and his divination of the treatment most appropriate to the instrument, expanded by this means in practical application, marks his ​sonatas as among the very first in which the genuine qualities of modern pianoforte music on a large scale are shown. They begin to approach to that broad and almost orchestral style which is sometimes said to be characteristic of Beethoven; and the use of octaves and fuller combinations of sound, and the occasional irruption of passages which bring into play stronger muscles than those of the fingers, are all in the direction of modern usage. In respect of structure, it is not necessary to consider more than that he commonly accepted the three movement type of sonata, beginning with a movement in binary form and ending with a rondo, and having a slow movement in the middle. His handling is free and at the same time thoroughly under control. One of his characteristics is the love of importing little touches of learning or scientific ingenuity into the treatment; as in the Sonata in G (of four movements) in which two canons in direct and contrary motion take the place of the minuet and trio. In another sonata, in F, one figure is woven through the whole substance of the first movement, appearing in the different sections diminished and inverted, and in various phases of expression which quite alter its aspect. His slow movements are sometimes equally simple and expressive, but also frequently of that ornamental order which has been sufficiently commented on.
In one celebrated case he anticipated the modern taste for programme by calling one of his longest and most pretentious sonatas 'Didone abbandonata. Scena tragica.' But appearance of dramatic purpose does not turn him aside from regularity of form any more than in other sonatas. His style is not exempt from the family likeness which is observable in all composers of the latter part of the century. His ideas are large and broad, and not unworthy to have exerted some influence upon both Mozart and Beethoven. A certain dryness and reticence makes him unlikely to be greatly in favour in modern times, but his place as an important figure in the development of the sonata in its relation with the pianoforte is assured.
One further composer who deserves some consideration in connection with the sonata before Beethoven's time is J. L. Dussek, who was born ten years after Clementi, and soon after Mozart. His most noteworthy characteristics are an individual though not incisive style, and an instinct of a high order for the qualities and requirements of the pianoforte. There is some diversity in point of value between his early and his later sonatas. The former are rather narrow in idea and structure, whereas the latter, such as Opus 70 in A♭, are quite remarkable for freedom and elaboration of form and subject. Both in this sonata and in the Opus 77 he makes use of the hitherto almost unknown device of extending the effect of the first sections by subordinate transitions as well as by accessory subjects. In the first movement of Opus 70 there is the unusual feature of a happy modulation out and back again in the actual substance of the second subject—a characteristic which is common enough in the works of such moderns as Schumann and Brahms, but was exceedingly rare in Dussek's time. Another characteristic which Dussek has in common with more modern writers is the infusion of a certain amount of sense and sentiment even into his passages and flourishes, which with his immediate predecessors had been too commonly barren. He also takes thought to enliven his recapitulations by variation or ingeniously diversified transposition of order in the ideas (as in Opus 77). His writing for the instrument is brilliant and sparkling, and has certain premonitions of Weber in it. The ideas are sometimes, even in his best works, trite and vapid, but more often delicate and attractive. The slow movements have a sustained and serious manner, also unusual in his time, and said to be derived from his having studied the organ considerably in his younger days. He stands historically with giants on either hand, and this has contributed to make him appear somewhat of a parenthesis in the direct course of sonata development. Their vastness of artistic proportion did not however suppress his personality, or extinguish his individuality, which is still clear in his own line, and has exerted some influence both upon the modern style of playing, and also upon the style of musical thought of a few modern composers for the pianoforte to whom the giants did not strongly appeal.
The direct line of development after Haydn, Mozart, and Clementi, is obviously continued in Beethoven. As we have pointed out, the changes which took place after Emmanuel Bach's labours were less rapid and remarkable than in times preceding. The finishing touches had been put to the structural system, and men were so delighted with its perfection as structure, that they were content to hear it repeated over and over again without calling for variety or individuality in the treatment, and very often without caring much about the quality of the thing said. The other side of development was technical. The pianoforte being a new instrument, the manner of musical speech best adapted to it had to be discovered. With the earlier composers forms of expression better suited to other instruments were adopted; but by degrees experiments in effect and assiduous attention to the capabilities of the hand, such as Clementi gave in his early years, had brought the mechanism of expression to a tolerably consistent and complete state; so that when Beethoven appeared he was spared the waste of force incident to having to overcome elementary problems of instrumental technique, and the waste of effect incidental to compromises, and was enabled to concentrate all his powers upon the musical material.
Beethoven's works introduce a new element into the problem, and one that complicates matters immeasurably. With his predecessors structural simplicity had been a paramount consideration, and often straitened somewhat the freedom of the idea. The actual subjects seem ​drilled into a regular shape, admitting of very little variation, in order that the development of the movement might march direct and undeviating in its familiar course. Musicians had arrived at that artificial state of mind which deliberately chose to be conscious of formal elements. Their misconception was a natural one. The existing conditions of art might lead a man to notice that uncultivated people delighted in simple and single tunes, and that cultivated people enjoyed the combination of several, when disposed according to certain laws, and to conclude from this that the disposition was of more importance than the matter. But, in fact, the mind is led from point to point by feelings which follow the ideas, and of these and their interdependence and development it is necessarily conscious; but of the form it is not actively conscious unless the ideas have not sufficient force to possess it, or the necessities of logical consequence are outrageously violated. It is only under peculiar social and intellectual conditions that structural qualities can be so excessively emphasised. The production of a genuine master must be ultimately reducible to logical analysis, but not on the spot or at once; and to insist upon art being so immediately verifiable is not only to set the conclusion to be drawn from its historical development upside down, but to refer the enjoyment of its highest achievements to the contemplation of dry bones. The imagination and the reason must both be satisfied, but before all things the imagination.
In the middle years of the 18th century the imaginative side had not a fair chance. Music was too much dependent upon the narrow limits of the taste of polite circles, and the field of appeal to emotion was not free. But when at last the natural man threw off the incubus that had so long oppressed him, the spiritual uprising and the broadening of life brought a new kind of vigour into art and literature. Beethoven was the first great composer to whom the limitless field of unconventionalised human emotion was opened, and his disposition was ready for the opportunity. Even in the ordinary trifles of life he sometimes showed by an apparently superfluous rebellion against polite usages his antipathy to artificiality, and conversely the bent of his sympathy towards unmistakeable realities of human feeling. He thus became the prototype of genuine modern music, and the first exponent of its essential qualities; and the sonata form being ready in its main outlines for his use, and artistic instinct having achieved the most perfect spontaneity in its employment, he took possession of it as an appropriate mode of formulating some of the richest and most impressive of his thoughts. With him the idea asserted its rights. This is not to say that structure is ignored, but that the utmost expansion and liberty is admitted in the expression of the vital parts which can be made consistent with perfect balance in the unfolding of the whole; and this obviously depends upon the powers of the composer. Under such circumstances he can only be guided by the highest development of instinct, for the process of balance and distribution becomes so complicated that it is almost out of the reach of conscious analysis, much more of the dictation of science. The evolution of this vital ingredient, the idea, is so obscure and difficult that it is out of the question to enter upon it in this place. It is an unhappy fact that the scientists who have endeavoured to elucidate music, with a few great and honourable exceptions, foreseeing that the analysis of ideas was quite beyond their reach, at all events until immense advances are made in the sciences which have direct reference to the human organism, have set their faces to the structural elements, as if music consisted of nothing but lines and surfaces. The existence of idea is so habitually ignored that it necessarily appears to be nonexistent in their estimate of art. On the other hand, the philosophers who have said anything about it appear on the surface not to be in accord; though in reality their views are both compatible and necessary, but require a more detailed experience of the art and of its historical development to explain their interaction. But meanwhile the external method of the scientists gains disproportionate preeminence, and conscientious people feel uneasily that there may be no such things as ideas at all, and that they will be doing better to apply themselves to mathematics. And yet the idea is everything, and without it music is absolutely null and void; and though a great and comprehensive mathematician may make an analysis after the event, a synthesis which is merely the fruit of his calculations will be nothing more than a sham and an imposture. In fact the formulation of the idea is a most vital matter in musical history, and its progress can be traced from the earliest times, proceeding simultaneously with the development of the general structure of the sonata. The expressive raw material was drawn from various sources. The style of expression developed under the influences of religion in the ages preceding the beginnings of instrumental music, supplied something; dance music of all orders, mimetic and merely rhythmic, supplied much; the pseudo-realism of the drama, in respect of vocal inflexion and imitations of natural circumstances, also something; and the instincts surviving in the race from countless past ages, the actual cries arising from spontaneous nervous reaction, and many other similar causes, had a share in suggestion, and in actual, though unrealised, motive power. And all these, compounded and inseparably intermingled, supplied the basis of the expressive element in music. Through all the time from Monteverde to Beethoven this expressive element was being more and more clearly drawn into compact and definite proportions; floating at first vaguely on the surface, springing out in flashes of exceptional brightness here and there, and at times presenting almost perfect maturity by fits of individual good fortune; but hardly ever so free but that some of the matrix is felt to be ​clinging to the ore. It obtained complete but restricted symmetry with the composers immediately preceding Beethoven, but arrived only at last with him at that expansion which made it at once perfect and intelligible, and yet boundless in range within the limits of the art-material at the composer's command.
Prior to Beethoven, the development of a long work was based upon antitheses of distinct tunes and concrete lumps of subject representing separate organisms, either merely in juxtaposition, or loosely connected by more or less empty passages. There were ideas indeed, but ideas limited and confined by the supposed necessities of the structure of which they formed a part. But what Beethoven seems to have aimed at was the expansion of the term 'idea' from the isolated subject to the complete whole; so that instead of the subjects being separate, though compatible items, the whole movement, or even the whole work, should be the complete and uniform organism which represented in its entirety a new meaning of the word 'idea,' of which the subjects, in their close connection and inseparable affinities, were subordinate limbs. This principle is traceable in works before his time, but not on the scale to which he carried it, nor with his conclusive force. In fact, the condition of art had not been sufficiently mature to admit the terms of his procedure, and it was barely mature enough till he made it so.
His early works were in conformity with the style and structural principles of his predecessors; but he began, at least in pianoforte works, to build at once upon the topmost stone of their edifice. His earliest sonatas (op. 2) are on the scale of their symphonies. He began with the four-movement plan which they had almost entirely reserved for the orchestra. In the second sonata he already produces an example of his own peculiar kind of slow movement, full, rich, decisive in form, unaffected in idea, and completely divested of the elaborate graces which had been before its most conspicuous feature. In the same sonata also he produces a scherzo, short in this instance, and following the lines of the minuet, but of the genuine characteristic quality. Soon, in obedience to the spread of his idea, the capacity of the instrument seems to expand, and to attain an altogether new richness of sound, and a fullness it never showed before, as in many parts of the 4th Sonata (op. 7), especially the Largo, which shows the unmistakeable qualities which ultimately expanded into the unsurpassed slow movement of the Opus 106. As early as the 2nd Sonata he puts a new aspect upon the limits of the first sections; he not only makes his second subject in the first movement modulate, but he develops the cadence-figure into a very noticeable subject. It is fortunately unnecessary to follow in detail the various ways in which he expanded the structural elements of the sonata, as it has already been described in the article Beethoven, and other details are given in the article Form. In respect of the subject and its treatment, a fortunate opportunity is offered by a coincidence between a subordinate subject in a sonata of Haydn's in C, and a similar accessory in Beethoven's Sonata for cello and pianoforte in A major (op. 69), which serves to illustrate pregnantly the difference of scope which characterises their respective treatment. Haydn's is as follows:—
and Beethoven's:—
​As has been already explained, an expansion of this kind makes inevitable a similar expansion in the whole structure of the movement, and a much wider choice of relative keys than simple tonic and dominant in the expository sections; or else a much freer movement in every part of the sections, and emphasis upon unexpected relations of harmony. Even without this, the new warmth and intensity of the subject precludes mere reiteration of the accustomed usages, and necessitates a greater proportionate vitality in the subordinate parts of the work. The relative heat must be maintained, and to fall back upon familiar formulas would clearly be a jarring anomaly. In this manner the idea begins to dictate the form. But in order to carry out in equal measure the development of the idea, every resource that the range of music can supply must be admissible to him that can wield it with relevance. Hence Beethoven, as early as Opus 31, no. 2, reintroduces instrumental recitative with extraordinary effect. Later, he resumes the rhapsodical movement which Bach and earlier composers had employed in a different sense, as in the Sonata in E♭, op. 81, and in the third division of that in A, op. 101, and in the most romantic of romantic movements, the first in E major of op. 109. And lastly, he brings back the fugue as the closest means of expressing a certain kind of idea. In these cases the fugue is not a retrogression, nor a hybrid, but a new adaptation of an old and invaluable form under the influence of perfectly assimilated harmonic principles. The great fugue in the Sonata in B♭, op. 106, for instance, is not only extraordinary as a fugue, but is distributed in a perfectly ideal balance of long contrasting periods in different states of feeling, culminating duly with a supreme rush of elaborate force, as complex and as inexorable as some mighty action of nature. In these sonatas Beethoven touches all moods, and all in the absolute manner free from formality or crude artifice, which is the essential characteristic of genuine modern music. In a few of the earlier sonatas he reverts to manners and structural effects which are suggestive of the principles of his predecessors. But these occasional incursions of external influence are with rare exceptions inferior to the works in which his own original force of will speaks with genuine and characteristic freedom. The more difficult the problem suggested by the thought which is embodied in the subject, the greater is the result. The full richness of his nature is not called out to the strongest point till there is something preternaturally formidable to be mastered. The very statement of the opening bars of such sonatas as that in D minor, op. 31, no. 2; C major, op. 53; F minor, op. 57; B♭, op. 106: C minor, op. 111, is at such a level of daring breadth and comprehensive power, that it becomes obvious in a moment that the work cannot be carried out on equal proportionate terms without almost superhuman concentration, and unlimited command of technical resources, both in respect of the instrument and the art of expression. In such cases, Beethoven rises to a height which has only been attained by two or three composers in the whole history of music, in that sublimity which is almost his peculiar monopoly. But, fortunately for average beings, and average moods of people who have not always a taste for the sublime, he shows elsewhere, on a less exalted scale, the highest ideals of delicate beauty, and all shades of the humours of mankind, even to simple exuberant playfulness. The beauty and the merriment often exist side by side, as in the exquisite little Sonata in G, op. 14, no. 2, and in that in F♯ major, op. 78; and in a loftier and stronger spirit in company with more comprehensive ranges of feeling, in the Sonata in A, op. 101. In all these and many more there is an ideal continuity and oneness which is musically felt even where there is no direct external sign of the connection. In a few, however, there are signs of more than this. In the B♭ Sonata, op. 106, for instance, the similar disposition of intervals in the subjects of the various movements has led to the inference that he meant to connect them by transformations of one principal subject or germ. The same occurs with as much prominence in the Sonata in A♭, op. 110, which is in any case a specimen where the oneness and continuity are peculiarly felt. It is possible that the apparent transformations are not so much conscious as the result of the conditions of mind which were necessary to produce the oneness of effect, since concentration upon any subject is liable to exert influence upon closely succeeding action, whether of the mind or body, and to assimilate the fruit unconsciously to the form of the object contemplated. This, however, would not lessen the interest of the fact, but would possibly rather enhance it. It only affects the question whether or no Beethoven consciously reasoned about possible ways of extending and enhancing the opportunities of sonata-form—too large a subject to be entered upon here. As a rule, great masters appear to hit upon such germinal principles in the process of composition, without exactly formulating them in so many equivalent terms; and those who come after note the facts and apply them as useful resources, or sometimes as invaluable starting-points of fresh lines of development. It is a noticeable fact that Beethoven only seldom indicated a programme, and it is extremely rare in him to find even the dimmest suggestions of realism. In fact, as must be true of all the highest music, a work of his is not representative of a story, but of a mental process. Even if it deals with a story it does not represent the circumstances, but the condition of mind which results from its contemplation; or, in other words, the musical counterpart of the emotion to which it gives rise; and it is the coherency and consistent sequence of the emotions represented which produce the effect of oneness on the colossal scale of his greatest works, which is Beethoven's crowning achievement. With him the long process of development appears to find its utmost and complete culmination; and what comes after, and in ​sight of his work, can be little more than commentary. It may be seen, without much effort, that mankind does not achieve more than one supreme triumph on the same lines of art. When the conditions of development are fulfilled the climax is reached, but there is not more than one climax to each crescendo. The conditions of human life change ceaselessly, and with them the phenomena of art, which are their counterpart. The characteristics of the art of any age are the fruit of the immediate past, as much as are the emotional and intellectual conditions of that age. They are its signs, and it is impossible to produce in a succeeding age a perfect work of art in the same terms as those which are the direct fruit of a different and earlier group of causes; and it is partly for this reason that attempts to return to earlier conditions of art, which leave out the essential characteristics of contemporary feeling, invariably ring false.
The time produced other real men besides Beethoven, though not of his stamp. Weber and Schubert were both of the genuine modern type, genuinely musical through and through, though neither of them was a born writer of sonatas as Beethoven was. Beethoven possessed, together with the supremest gift of ideas, a power of prolonged concentration, and the certainty of self-mastery. This neither Weber nor Schubert possessed. Beethoven could direct his thought with infallible certainty; in Weber and Schubert the thought was often too much their master, and they both required, to keep them perfectly certain in the direction of their original musical matter, the guiding principle of a consciously realised dramatic or lyrical conception, which was generally supplied to them from without. As should be obvious from the above survey of the process of sonata development, the absolute mastery of the structural outlines, the sureness of foot of the strong man moving, unaided, but direct in his path, amidst the conflicting suggestions of his inspiration, is indispensable to the achievement of great and genuine sonatas. The more elaborate the art of expression becomes, the more difficult the success. Beethoven probably stood just at the point where the extremest elaboration and the most perfect mastery of combination on a large scale were possible. He himself supplied suggestion for yet further elaboration, and the result is that the works of his successors are neither so concentrated nor so well in hand as his. Weber was nearest in point of time, but his actual mastery of the art of composition was never very certain nor thoroughly regulated, though his musical instincts were almost marvellous. He had one great advantage, which was that he was a great pianist, and had the gift to extend the resources of the instrument by the invention of new and characteristic effects; and he was tolerably successful in avoiding the common trap of letting effect stand for substance. Another advantage was his supreme gift of melody. His tunes are for the most part of the old order, but infused with new life and heat by a breath from the genius of the people. His two best sonatas, in A♭ and D minor, are rich in thought, forcible, and genuinely full of expression. He always adopts the plan of four movements, and disposes them in the same order as Beethoven did. His treatment of form is also full and free, and he often imports some individuality into it. As simple instances may be taken—the use of the introductory phrase in the first movement of the Sonata in C, in the body of the movement; the rondo structure of the slow movements, especially in the Sonata in D minor, which has a short introduction, and elaborate variations in the place of exact returns of the subject; and the interspersion of subjects in the first movement of the Sonata in E minor, op. 70, so as to knit the two sections of the first half doubly together. An essentially modern trait is his love of completing the cycle of the movement by bringing in a last allusion to the opening features of the whole movement at the end, generally with some new element of expression or vivacity. Specially noticeable in this respect are the first and last (the 'Moto perpetuo') of the C major, the last of the A♭, and the first and last in both the D minor and E minor Sonatas. Weber had an exceptional instinct for dance- rhythms, and this comes out very remarkably in some of the minuets and trios, and in the last movement of the E minor.
As a whole the Weber group is a decidedly important item in pianoforte literature, instinct with romantic qualities, and aiming at elaborate expressiveness, as is illustrated by the numerous directions in the A♭ Sonata, such as 'con anima,' 'con duolo,' 'con passione,' 'con molt' affetto,' and so forth. These savour to a certain extent of the opera, and require a good deal of art and musical sense in the variation of time and the phrasing to give them due effect; and in this they show some kinship to the ornamental adagios of the times previous to Beethoven, though dictated by more genuinely musical feelings.
Schubert's sonatas do not show any operatic traits of the old manner, but there is plenty in them which may be called dramatic in a modern sense. His instincts were of a preeminently modern type, and the fertility of his ideas in their superabundance clearly made the self-restraint necessary for sonata-writing a matter of some difficulty. He was tempted to give liberty to the rush of thought which possessed him, and the result is sometimes delightful, but sometimes also bewildering. There are movements and even groups of them which are of the supremest beauty, but hardly any one sonata which is completely satisfactory throughout. His treatment of form is often daring even to rashness, and yet from the point of view of principle offers but little to remark, though in detail some perfectly magical feats of harmonic progression and strokes of modulation have had a good deal of influence upon great composers of later times. The point which he serves to ​illustrate peculiarly in the history of music is the transition from the use of the idea, as shown in Beethoven's Sonatas on a grand and richly-developed scale, to the close and intensely emotional treatment of ideas in a lyrical manner, which has as yet found its highest exponent in Schumann. In this process Schubert seems to stand midway—still endeavouring to conform to sonata ways, and yet frequently overborne by the invincible potency of the powers his own imagination has called up. The tendency is further illustrated by the exquisite beauty of some of the smaller and more condensed movements, which lose nothing by being taken out of the sonatas; being, like many of Schumann's, specimens of intense concentration in short space, the fruit of a single flash of deep emotion. Among the longer movements, the one which is most closely unified is the first of the A minor, op. 143, in which a feature of the first subject is made to preponderate conspicuously all through, manifestly representing the persistence of a special quality of feeling through the varying phases of a long train of thought. Like many other movements, it has a strong dramatic element, but more under appropriate control than usual.
As a whole, though illustrating richly many of the tendencies of modern music, the Sonatas cannot be taken as representing Schubert's powers as a composer of instrumental music so satisfactorily as his Quartets, his String Quintet, and some of his finest Symphonies. In these he often rose almost to the highest point of musical possibility. And this serves further to illustrate the fact that since Beethoven the tendency has been to treat the sonata-form with the fresh opportunities afforded by combinations of instruments, rather than on the old lines of the solo sonata.
Two other composers of sonatas of Beethoven's time require notice. These are Woelfl and Hummel. The former chiefly on account of his once celebrated sonata called 'Ne plus ultra,' in which he showed some of the devices of technique which he was considered to have invented—such as passages in thirds and sixths, and ingenious applications of the shake. The matter is poor and vapid, and as throwing light upon anything except his powers as a player, is worthless. Its very title condemns it, for Woelfl had the advantage of being Beethoven's junior; and it is astonishing how, by the side of the genuine difficulty of Beethoven's masterpieces, such a collection of tricks could ever have been dignified, even by the supposition of being particularly difficult. It seems impossible that such work should have had any influence upon genuinely musical people; but the sonata has all the signs of a useful piece for second-rate popular occasions; for which the variations on 'Life let us cherish' would doubtless be particularly effective.
Hummel in comparison with Woelfl was a giant, and certainly had preeminent gifts as a pianoforte-player. Like Weber he had an aptitude for inventing effects and passages, but he applied them in a different manner. He was of that nature which cultivates the whole technical art of speech till able to treat it with a certainty which has all the effect of mastery, and then instead of using it to say something, makes it chiefly serviceable to show off the contents of his finger répertoire. However, his technique is large and broad, full of sound and brilliancy, and when the works were first produced and played by himself they must have been extremely astonishing. His facility of speech is also wonderful, but his ideas were for the most part old-fashioned, even when he produced them—for it must not be forgotten that he was eight years younger than Beethoven and twenty-six younger than Clementi. The spirit which seems to rule him is the consciousness of a pianist before an audience, guided by the chances of display. His modulations are free and bold, but they are often superfluous, because the ideas are not on the level of intensity or broad freedom which necessitates or even justifies them. He probably saw that modulation was a means of effect, but did not realise that there is a ratio between the qualities of subject and the development of the movement that springs from it. From this it will be obvious that his sonatas are not written in the mood to produce works that are musically important. He had the very finest possible opportunities through living in Mozart's house during his most impressionable days, and the fruit is sufficiently noticeable in the clearness with which he distributes his structural elements, and in much of his manner of expressing himself; but he had not the inventive gift for musical ideas, which contact and even familiar intercourse with great masters seems inadequate to supply. The survival of traits characteristic of earlier times is illustrated by some of his slow movements, in which he brought the most elaborate forces of his finished technique to serve in the old style of artificial adagio, where there is a hyper-elaborated grace at every corner, and a shake upon every note that is long enough; and if a chord be suitable to rest upon for a little, it is adorned with quite a collection of ingenious finger exercises, artificially manipulated scales and arpeggios, arid the like contrivances; which do not serve to decorate anything worthy of the honour, but stand on their own merits. There are occasional traits of expression and strokes of force in the sonatas, but the technique of the pianist preponderates excessively over the invention of the composer. At the same time the right and masterly use of the resources of an instrument is not by any means a matter of small moment in art, and Hummel's is right and masterly in a very remarkable degree.
After the early years of the present century, the sonata, in its conventional sense of instrumental work for a solo or at most for two instruments, occupies a smaller and decreasing space in the domain of music. Great composers have paid it proportionately very little attention, and the few examples they afford have rather an ​effect of being out of the direct line of their natural mode of expression. In Chopin, for instance, the characteristic qualities of modern music, in the treatment of ideas in short and malleable forms specially adapted to their expression, are found abundantly, and in these his genuine qualities are most clearly displayed. His sonatas are less successful, and less familiar to musicians; because, though quite master enough to deal with structure clearly and definitely, it was almost impossible for him to force the ideas within the limits which should make that structure relevant and convincing. They are children of a fervid and impetuous genius, and the classical dress and manners do not sit easily upon them. Moreover the luxuriant fancy, the richness and high colour of expression, the sensuous qualities of the harmony, all tend to emphasise detail in a new and peculiar manner, and to make the sonata-principle of the old order appear irrelevant. The most successful are the Sonatas in B♭ minor for pianoforte, op. 35, and that for pianoforte and cello in G minor, op. 65. In both these cases the first movements, which are generally a sure test of a capacity for sonata-writing, are clearly disposed, and free from superfluous wandering and from tautology. There are certain idiosyncrasies in the treatment of the form, as for instance in the recapitulation, which in both cases is almost limited to the materials of the second section, the opening features of the movement being only hinted at in conclusion. The subjects themselves are fairly appropriate to the style of movement, and are kept well in hand, so that on the whole, in these two cases, the impression conveyed is consistent with the sonata-character. In scherzos Chopin was thoroughly at home, and moreover they represent a province in which far more abandonment is admissible. In both sonatas they are successful, but that in the Pianoforte Sonata is especially fascinating and characteristic, and though the modulations are sometimes rather reckless the main divisions are well proportioned, and consequently the general effect of the outlines is sufficiently clear. The slow movements of both are very well known; that of the Pianoforte Sonata being the Funeral March, and the other being a kind of romance in Chopin's own free manner, which is familiar to players on the cello. The last movement of the Pianoforte Sonata is a short but characteristic outbreak of whirling notes, in general character not unlike some of his Preludes, and equally free and original in point of form, but in that respect not without precedent among the last movements of early masters. In the mind of the composer it possibly had a poetical connection with the Funeral March. The other last movement is a free kind of rondo, and therefore more consonant with the ordinary principles of form, and is appropriate, without being so interesting as the other movements. The total effect of these sonatas is naturally of an entirely different order from that of the earlier types, and not so convincing in oneness as the works of great masters of this kind of form; they are nevertheless plausible as wholes, and in details most effective; the balance and appropriate treatment of the two instruments in the op. 65 being especially noteworthy. The other sonatas for pianoforte, in C minor and B minor, are more unequal. The first appears to be an early work, and contains some remarkable experiments, one of which at least has value, others probably not. As examples may be mentioned the use of 5-4 time throughout the slow movement, and the experiment of beginning the recapitulation of the first movement in B♭ minor, when the principal key is C minor. In this sonata he seems not to move with sufficient ease, and in the B minor, op. 58, with something too much to have the general aspect of a successful work of the kind. The technical devices in the latter as in the others are extremely elaborate and effective, without being offensively obtrusive, and the ideas are often clear and fascinating; but as a complete and convincing work it is hardly successful.
Sonatas which followed implicitly the old lines without doing more than formulate subjects according to supposed laws do not require any notice. The mere artificial reproduction of forms that have been consciously realised from observation of great works of the past without importing anything original into the treatment, is often the most hopeless kind of plagiarism, and far more deliberate than the accidents of coincidence in ideas which are obvious to superficial observers.
As examples of independent thought working in a comparatively untried field, Mendelssohn's six sonatas for the organ have some importance. They have very little connection with the Pianoforte Sonata, or the history of its development; for Mendelssohn seems to have divined that the binary and similar instrumental forms of large scope were unsuitable to the genius of the instrument, and returned to structural principles of a date before those forms had become prominent or definite. Their chief connection with the modern sonata type lies in the distribution of the keys in which the respective movements stand, and the broad contrasts in time and character which subsist between one division or movement and another. Different members of the group represent different methods of dealing with the problem. In the large movements fugal and contrapuntal principles predominate, sometimes alternating with passages of a decidedly harmonic character. In movements which are not absolute fugues the broad outlines of form are commonly similar to those already described as exemplified in Bach's Sonatas, and in the first and last movements of his 'Concerto dans le style Italien.' This form in its broadest significance amounts to a correspondence of well-defined sections at the beginning and end, with a long passage of 'free fantasia,' sometimes fugally developed, in the middle. The clearest example in these sonatas is the first movement of the 3rd Sonata, in A major, in which the corresponding divisions at either end are long, and strongly ​contrasted in the modern quality and more simultaneous motion of the parts, with the elaborate fugal structure of the middle division. In the last movement of the Sonata in B♭ the corresponding sections are very short, but the effect is structurally satisfying and clear. In no case is the structural system of keys used with anything approaching the clearness of a pianoforte sonata. Material is contrasted with material, sometimes simply as subjects or figures, sometimes even in respect of style; as a chorale with recitative, chorale with fugal passages, or harmonic passages with contrapuntal passages. Sometimes these are kept distinct, and sometimes, as in the first movement of the Sonata in B♭, they are combined together at the end. The general laying out of the complete works, though based on the same broadest radical principles, is in actual order and manner quite distinct from that of pianoforte sonatas. The longer movements alternate with very short ones, which commonly resemble Romances, Lieder ohne Worte, or such expressive lyrical types; and occasionally the whole sonata concludes with a little movement of this sort, as no. 3 in A and no. 6 in D. They are generally in the simplest kind of primary form with a proportionately important coda. In point of actual style and treatment of the instrument there is a great diversity in different sonatas. In some the solid old contrapuntal style predominates, in similar proportion to that in the organ preludes, sonatas, etc. of Bach; but this rarely occurs without some intermixture of modern traits. The most completely and consistently modern in style is the Sonata in D major, no. 5, which is practically in three divisions. The first is a chorale, the second a kind of 'song without words' in B minor, and the third a species of fantasia, in which the sections are balanced by distinct figures, without more tonal structure than emphasis upon the principal key at the beginning and end, and variety of modulation with some thematic development in the middle. In other sonatas different modes of writing for the instrument are used as a means of enforcing the contrast between one movement and another. Thus in the 2nd Sonata the first division is a kind of prelude in a modern manner, chiefly homophonic and orchestral; the second corresponds to a distinct romance or 'song without words' with clearly defined melody and graceful and constantly flowing independent accompaniment. In the third movement, which though in 3-4 time has something of a march quality, the modern harmonic character is very prominent, and the last movement is a fugue. Similar distribution of styles and modes of writing are as clearly used in the 1st and 4th Sonatas; in the former more elaborately.
Among the few attempts which have been made to add something genuine to the literature of the Pianoforte Sonata, that in F♯, op. 11, by Schumann, first published under the pseudonym of Florestan and Eusebius, is most interesting. This was clearly an attempt to adapt to the sonata-form the so-called romantic ideas of which Schumann was so prominent and successful a representative. The outward aspect of the matter is twofold. First, the absolute subordination of the sectional distribution to the ideas contained, and, secondly, the interchange of the subject-matter so as to connect the movements absolutely as well as intrinsically. The first point is illustrated by the continuity of the Allegro Vivace and the constant shifting and swaying of modulation and changing of tempo; also by the variety of the subjects and the apparently irregular manner of their introduction, if judged from the point of view of the older sonatas. Thus the part which corresponds to the first section comprises a first subject, containing a figure which may be called the text of the movement, and many subsidiary features and transitions. The second section follows continuously, with new matter and allusions to the first subject, all in a constant sway of transition, till at the end of the first half of the movement a long continuous subject in A is reached, which in its sustained and earnest calmness seems to supply the point of rest after the long preceding period of activity. This same subject is the only one which is given with complete fullness at the end of the whole movement, the rest of the subject-matter, though all represented in the recapitulation, being considerably condensed and curtailed. The second point is illustrated by the connection between the introduction and the two following movements. The introduction itself is in an elaborate kind of primary form. Its impressive principal subject is reintroduced in the middle of the succeeding allegro; and the subject of the middle portion serves as the main staple of the beautiful aria which is the central movement of the whole sonata. The success of such things certainly depends on the way in which they are done, and mere description of them gives very little impress of their effectiveness in this case. There can hardly be a doubt that in these devices Schumann hit upon a true means of applying original thought to the development of the structural outlines, following the suggestion which is really contained in Beethoven's work, that the structure is perceptible through the disposition of the ideas, and not only by emphasising the harmonic sections. The actual distribution of the structure which is hidden under the multiplicity of ideas is remarkably careful and systematic. Even in the development portion there is method and balance, and the same is true of large expanses in the last movement. The freedom with which Schumann uses subordinate transitions makes the balance of keys a matter requiring great concentration; but it is remarkable in his work, as contrasted with similar modern examples by other composers, that he rarely makes random and unrestrained flights, but keeps within the bounds which make proportionate balance possible. It is no doubt a matter of very great difficulty to carry out such principles as this work seems to embody; but if the sonata form be really capable of any ​fresh extension it will probably be to a great extent on such lines.
Schumann's second sonata, in G, op. 22, though written during almost the same period, seems to be a retrogression from the position taken up by that in F♯. It is possibly a more effective work, and, from the pianist's point of view, more capable of being made to sound convincing. And yet in detail it is not so interesting, nor is it technically so rich, nor so full and noble in sound. He seems to aim at orthodoxy with deliberate purpose, and the result is that though vehement and vigorous in motion, it is not, for Schumann, particularly warm or poetical. The second subjects of the first and last movements are characteristic, and so is great part of the peculiarly sectional and epigrammatic scherzo. The andantino also has remarkable points about it, but is not so fascinating as the slow movement of the F♯ Sonata.
The principles indicated in the sonata opus 11 reappear later with better results, as far as the total impression is concerned, in larger forms of instrumental music, and also in the D minor Sonata for violin and pianoforte. In this there is a close connection between the introduction and the most marked feature of the succeeding quick movement, and similar linking of scherzo and slow movement by means of a reference to the subject of the former in the progress of the latter, with a distinctly poetic purpose. The Sonata in A for the same combination of instruments is not on such an elaborate scale, nor has it as many external marks to indicate a decided purpose; but it is none the less poetical in effect, which arises in the first movement from the continuity of structure and the mysterious sadness of spirit which it expresses, and in the slow movement from its characteristic tenderness and sweetness.
Liszt, in his remarkable Sonata in B minor dedicated to Schumann, undoubtedly adopts the same principles of procedure, and works them out with more uncompromising thoroughness. He knits the whole sonata into an unbroken unity, with distinct portions passing into one another, representing the usual separate movements. The interest is concentrated upon one principal idea, to which the usual second subjects and accessories serve as so many commentaries and antitheses, and express the influences which react upon its course. This is further illustrated by the process sometimes defined as 'transformation of themes,' already referred to in connection with Beethoven's Sonatas in B♭ and A♭; which is really no more than a fresh way of applying that art of variation which had been used from almost the earliest times of sonata-writing, in recapitulating subjects in the progress of a moment, as well as in regular set themes and variations; though it had not been adopted before to serve a poetical or ideal conception pervading and unifying the whole work. In the actual treatment of the subject-matter, Liszt adopts, as Beethoven had done, the various opportunities afforded not only by harmonic structural principles, but by the earlier fugal and contrapuntal devices, and by recitative, adapting them with admirable breadth and freedom to a thoroughly modern style of thought. It seems almost superfluous to add that the purpose is carried out with absolute mastery of technical resource, in respect both of the instrument and of the disposition of the parts of the movement.
The pianoforte sonatas of Brahms are as astounding specimens of youthful power and breadth and dignity of style as exist in the whole range of the art; but it must at present be considered doubtful if they represent his maturer convictions. Both sonatas appear to have been written before he arrived at the age of twenty; and it is probable that he was then more influenced by the romantic theories which Schumann represented, than he is in his later works, as far as his tendencies can be judged from their constitution. Consequently the fact of the earlier sonatas having obviously poetic purpose and intent cannot be taken as any proof that the great mass of his works (which it is to be hoped will yet be greatly enlarged and enriched) would justify us in enrolling him among those who consistently maintain a poetic conception of instrumental music. On the other hand, his adoption of shorter and more individual forms, such as cappriccios, intermezzi, rhapsodies, in his mature age, lends at least indirect countenance to the view that the tendency of music is to subordinate form to idea; and that if the classical form of the sonata is not expansible enough, other forms must be accepted which will admit of more freedom of development. This implies a question as to the proper meaning of the word 'sonata,' and a doubt as to its being legitimately assimilable to the tendency to centralise the interest upon the idea, as a contrast to the old practice of making an equal balance between two main subjects as a means of structural effect. If the word is to be so restricted, it will only be another conventional limitation, and, it may be added, must before long put an end to further enrichment of the literature of so-called sonatas.
In the finest of Brahms's two early sonatas, that in F minor, the first slow movement is headed by a quotation from a poem of Sternau, and another movement is called Rückblick. These are clearly external marks of a poetical intention. In the actual treatment of the subjects there is no attempt to connect the movements; but the freedom of transition, even in the actual progress of a subject (see the second subject of the first movement), is eminently characteristic of the composer, and of a liberal view of sonata development. In the last movement—a rondo—the most noticeable external mark of continuity is the elaborately ingenious treatment of the subject of the second episode in the latter part of the movement. Brahms has not added further to the list of solo pianoforte sonatas, but he has illustrated the tendency to look for fresh opportunities in combinations of solo instruments, as in his pianoforte quartets and quintet, which are really just as much sonatas as those usually so ​designated; in fact, one of the versions of the Quintet, which stands as a duet for two pianofortes, is in that form published as a 'sonata.' One of the latest examples of his chamber music is the Sonata for pianoforte and violin. This requires notice as the work of a great master, but throws very little light on any sort of extension of the possibilities of sonata-form. There seems to be a sort of poetic design in the complicated arrangement of the first half of the first movement, in which the characteristic figures of the first subject reappear, as if to connect each section with the centre of interest; and the half concludes with a complete restatement of the first subject simply and clearly in the original key, as is the case also in the same composer's Serenade in A for small orchestra. It may be observed in passing that this device curiously recalls the early composite form, in which the first subject reappears at the beginning of the second half [see p. 559b]. There is one other slightly suggestive point—namely, the reappearance of the introductory phrase of the slow movement in one of the episodes of the final Rondo. The work as a whole is not so large in character, or so rich in development, as many others of Brahms's earlier works in the form of chamber music. This is probably owing to the unsuitability of the combination of violin and pianoforte for such elaboration of structure and mass of sound as is best adapted to show the composer to the highest advantage.
Certain traits in his treatment of form, such as the bold digressions of key at the very outset of a movement, and the novel effects of transition in the subjects themselves, have already been described in the article Form. It is only necessary here to point out that Brahms seems most characteristically to illustrate the tendency in modern music which has been styled 'intellectualism'; which is definable as elaborate development of all the opportunities and suggestions offered by figures, harmonic successions, or other essential features of subjects or accessories, so as to make various portions of the work appear to grow progressively out of one another. This sometimes takes the form of thematic development, and sometimes that of reviving the figures of one subject in the material or accompaniment of another, the object being to obtain new aspects of close and direct logical coherence and consistency. Beethoven is the prototype of this phase of modern music, and the examples of it in his later instrumental works are of the finest description. Fortunately the field is a very large one, and rich in opportunities for composers of exceptional gifts; of whom in this department of art Brahms is certainly the first living representative. There are several examples which illustrate this tendency in the F minor Quintet, which also in its form of a Duo for pianoforte is called 'Sonata.' One of the most obvious is the case in which the cadence concluding a paragraph is formulated, as in the following example at (a), the phrase being immediately taken up by a different instrument and embodied as a most significant feature in the accessory subject whicb follows, as at (b).
Under the same head of Intellectualism is sometimes erroneously included that broad and liberal range of harmony which characterises the best composers of the day. This may doubtless call for intellectual effort in those who are unfamiliar with the progress of art, or of inexpansive powers of appreciation, but in the composer it does not imply intellectual purpose, but only the natural step onwards from the progressions of harmony which are familiar to those which are original. With composers of second rank such freedom is often experimental, and destructive to the general balance and proportion of the structure, but with Brahms it appears to be a special study to bring everything into perfect and sure proportion, so that the classical idea of instrumental music may be still maintained in pure severity, notwithstanding the greater extension and greater variety of range in the harmonic motion of the various portions of the movement. In fact Brahms appears now to take his stand on the possibility of producing new instrumental works of real artistic value on the classical principles of abstract music, without either condescending to the popular device of a programme, or accepting the admissibility of a modification of the sonata-form to suit the impulse or apparent requirements of a poetical or dramatic principle.
A sonata which bears more obviously on the direction of modern art in the poetic sense is that of Sterndale Bennett, called 'The Maid of Orleans.' This is an example of programme-music in its purest simplicity. Each of the four movements has a quotation to explain its purpose, and in the slow movement the second section has an additional one. Nevertheless the movements are simple adaptations of the usual forms, the first standing for an introduction, the second representing the usual binary allegro, the third a slow movement in condensed binary form, and the last a rondo. There is but little attempt at using any structural means, such as original distribution of subject-matter, to enforce the poetic idea: so the ​whole can only be taken as an illustration of a poem in sonata form. But this nevertheless has some importance, as showing the acceptance of the aptitude of sonata-form for such purposes by a composer who was by no means in full sympathy with the lengths to which Schumann was prepared to carry the romantic theories.
Among other living composers who treat sonata-form in a poetic fashion, we may name Raff and Rubinstein. The works of the former are always admirable in the treatment of the instruments, and both composers frequently present subjects of considerable fascination; but neither have that weight or concentration in structural development which would demand detailed consideration. Poetic treatment is commonly supposed to absolve the composer from the necessity of attending to the structural elements; but this is clearly a misconception. Genuine beauty in subjects may go far to atone for deficiency and irrelevancy in the development, but at best it is only a partial atonement, and those only are genuine masterpieces in which the form, be it ever so original, is just as clear and convincing in the end as the ideas of which it is the outcome.
The whole process of the development of the Sonata as an art-form, from its crudest beginnings to its highest culmination, took nearly two hundred years; and the progress was almost throughout steady, continuous, and uniform in direction. The earlier history is chiefly occupied by its gradual differentiation from the Suite-form, with which for a time it was occasionally confounded. But there always was a perceptible difference in the general tendency of the two. The Suite gravitated towards dance-forms, and movements which similarly had one principal idea or form of motion pervading them, so that the balance of contrasts lay between one movement and another, and not conspicuously between parts of the same movement. The Sonata gravitated towards more complicated conditions and away from pure dance-forms. Diversity of character between subjects and figures was admitted early into single movements, and contrasts of key were much more strongly emphasised; and while in the Suite, except in extremely rare cases, all the movements were in one key, amongst the very earliest Sonatas there are examples of a central movement being cast in a different key from the rest.
[ C. H. H. P. ]