II. SLOW MOVEMENTS OF PIANOFORTE SONATAS.
Reference has already been made in Chapters VI and VII to the lack of sustaining power in the tone of the pianoforte of Haydn and Mozart's day, and the consequent use of ornament in their pianoforte music. In Figure XLI (a) is shown the beginning of the andante of Mozart's sonata referred to above, and at (b) will be found the corresponding portion of the restatement in the same movement. These two quotations should be compared with the corresponding portions of the two pieces that serve as examples for analysis with this chapter. This comparison will reveal how much more highly ornamented was the music written for the piano than that for instruments with sustained tone.
(a)
![[PNG]](#5102994518728001825_pag145_score1andpag146_score1.png.id-8291439013036779911.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
(b)
![[PNG]](#5102994518728001825_pag146_score2andpag147_score1.png.id-8625969008188296532.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
FIGURE XLI.
It will be observed that this quotation from Mozart is in strophic form; each phrase of two measures constitutes, as it were, a poetic line, the second of which closes with a half cadence, and the last with a full cadence or period. In this respect it follows the old folk-song type, and, indeed, that model serves for the great majority of lyric themes in sonatas and symphonies. But in its initial qualities this melody shows a great advance over tunes like "Barbara Alien" and "Polly Oliver," an advance due to the flexibility to which both melody and harmony had attained in Mozart's time, and to that freedom of technique provided by the piano as compared with the voice.
These quotations from Mozart are from a sonata movement which is, on the whole, above the formal average of the pianoforte pieces of that period. Many of them were excessively ornamented. In Figure XLII are shown two quotations from a sonata of Haydn, in the latter of which the ornaments are profuse.
(a)
![[PNG]](#5102994518728001825_pag147_score2.png.id-4577998670268927914.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
(b)
![[PNG]](#5102994518728001825_pag148_score1.png.id-7318329995055301758.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
FIGURE XLII.
In spite of the somewhat artificial atmosphere that surrounds much of the pianoforte music of this period there is, in the best specimens of it, a charming formal beauty. It is within its own sphere genuine and true to life. One has to consider the kind of society that it represents, as well as the status of music in that society. The art was not, at that time, free enough, nor practical enough, to deal with deep emotions; people looked on it as a refined sort of amusement. Not until Beethoven had written his music did its possibilities as a vehicle for deep human feeling and experience become evident.