III
The pianoforte sonata was a sufficiently clearly defined product of musical craftsmanship, if not art, before Haydn and Mozart began seriously to express themselves in it. It is right then to summarize briefly the musical value of the chief sonatas before their day.
The many writers may be divided according to the countries in which they practised their art. In London are to be found P. D. Paradies (1710-1792) and Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785), both Italians, and Johann Christian Bach, submitting almost unconditionally to Italian influence. In the London group too must be reckoned one of the most important men in the development of pianoforte music, Muzio Clementi. In Vienna the chief figure is G. C. Wagenseil; in Paris, Jean Schobert; in Berlin, Emanuel Bach, with whom may be reckoned Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, who, through his brother Johann Ludwig Anton, a pupil of Sebastian Bach, was clearly influenced by the works of the great masters.
Both Galuppi and Paradies rather continue the tradition of Scarlatti than contribute to the development of the new style. Both, however, published sets of sonatas, that is sets of pieces in more than one movement; though the triplex form is practically unfamiliar to them. Their music has great sprightliness and charm. It should be mentioned because the work of Paradies especially was admired and recommended by Clementi.
Christian Bach, on the other hand, is full of the new idea. His life itself may well claim attention. It is sufficiently remarkable that he almost alone of the great Bach family which had for generations played a part in the development of music in Germany, and was to play such a part there for many years to come, broke the traditions of his fathers, went to Italy for eight years, even became a Catholic, and finally decided to pass the last twenty years of his life in London. Though the many stories of his extravagances and dissipations have been most unrighteously exaggerated, he was none the less of a gay, light-hearted and pleasure-loving nature which is in sharp contrast to the graver and more pious dispositions of his ancestors.
His father died when he was but fifteen years old. He had already shown marked ability as a player of the harpsichord, and his brother Emanuel took him to Berlin after the father’s death and trained him further in the art for four years. Then followed the eight years in Italy where he was beloved and admired by all with whom he came in contact, not the least by the great Padre Martini in Bologna, with whom he studied for many years. In 1762 he went to London, chiefly to write operas. He was enormously popular and successful. He was court clavecinist to Queen Anne and in 1780 a Bath paper spoke of him as the greatest player of his time.
At some time not long after his arrival in England he published a set of six sonatas for the harpsichord, dedicated to the amusement of ‘His Serene Highness, Monseigneur le duc Ernst, duc de Mecklenburg.’ Of these the second, in D major, offers a particularly excellent example of clear, lucid writing in the sonata form. The first movement is admirable. The first theme is composed of vigorous chords. It is given twice, then followed by a transitional passage full of fire; the right hand keeping a continuous flow of broken chord figures, over the rising and falling powerful motives in the left. The preparation for the announcement of the second theme is in remarkably mature classical manner, and the lovely melodious second theme, with its gentle Albertian accompaniment, is clearly a promise of Mozart to come. There is a fine free closing passage. The development section is long and varied, astonishingly modern; and the return to the first theme, prepared by a long pedal point and a crescendo, is not a little fiery and dramatic. The second movement, an andante in G major, and the quick final movement in D again, round off a work which for clearness of form, for balance in proportions, and for a certain fine and healthy charm, is wholly admirable. Above all there is about all his work a real grace which, superficial as it may be, is a precious and perhaps a rare quality in pianoforte music, a quality both of elegance and amiability. It is a reflection of his own amiable nature, so conspicuous in all his dealings with the little Mozart during the spring of 1765.
Christian Bach is no careless musician. His work is done with a sure and unfailing hand. No man could have lived fifteen years in the house of his father, Sebastian, and four more in that of his brother Emanuel, and yet again eight under the strong personal influence of Padre Martini, the most learned contrapuntist of his day, without acquiring a mastery of the science of music. Such Christian Bach had at his command; such he chose to conceal under a lightness and gaiety of thought and style.
As regards instrumental music in particular his influence upon Mozart, though in some ways ineradicable, was largely supplanted by the influence of Josef and Michael Haydn. What Mozart received from him in the domain of opera, however, as summarized by Messrs. de Wyzewa and Saint-Foix in their ‘W. A. Mozart’ (Paris, 1912), was characteristic of all of Bach’s music: ‘A mixture of discrete elegance and melodic purity, a sweetness sometimes a little too soft [un peu molle] but always charming, a preference of beauty above intensity of dramatic expression, or rather a constant preoccupation to keep expression within the limits of beauty.’
Muzio Clementi was born in Rome in 1752, but when hardly more than a lad of fourteen was brought to London by an English gentleman, and London was henceforth his home until he died in 1832. He was a brilliant virtuoso, though he travelled but little to exhibit his powers; an excellent pedagogue; a very shrewd business man. Among his many compositions of all kinds, about sixty are sonatas for pianoforte. The first series of three was published in 1770 and is usually taken to determine the date at which the pianoforte began really to supplant the harpsichord.
Concerning Clementi’s relation to the development of a new pianoforte technique we shall speak further on. Here we have to do with the musical worth of his sonatas. Clementi was born before Mozart and Beethoven. He outlived them both, not to mention Haydn, Weber and Schubert. Mozart, after a test of skill with him in Vienna, had little to say of him save that he had an excellent, clear technique. He remained primarily a virtuoso in all his composition; but on the one hand he undoubtedly influenced Mozart and Beethoven,—and not only in the matter of pianoforte effects,—while on the other he no less obviously held himself open to influence from them, particularly from Beethoven.
His pianoforte sonatas show a steady development towards the curtailing of sheer virtuosity and the supremacy of emotional seriousness. In the early works, op. 2, op. 7, and op. 12, for example, he is obviously writing for display. The sonatas in op. 2 have but two movements. After that he generally composes them of three. The spirit of Scarlatti prevails, though it is almost impossible to point to any close relationship between the two men. The last movement of the second sonata in op. 26 perhaps resembles Scarlatti as definitely as any. But the fundamental difference between them, which may well obliterate all traces of the indebtedness of the one to the other, is that Clementi writes in the new melodic style. That he was a skilled contrapuntist did not restrain his use of the Alberti bass and other formulas of accompaniment.
He composed with absolute clearness. The classical triplex form, with its conventional transitional passages, its clear-cut sections, and, above all, its well-defined thematic melodies, can nowhere else be better exemplified. What perhaps mars his music, or at any rate makes a great part of it tiresome to modern ears, is the employment of long scale passages in many of his transitional passages. They cannot but suggest the exercise book and the hours of practice which are back of them. The concise figures of Schobert, of Haydn and Mozart may sound thin, but, though they suggest sometimes the schoolboy, they spare us the school.
On the other hand, Clementi was wonderfully fertile in figures that sound well on the piano, and many of his sonatas, empty enough of genuine feeling, are still pleasant and vivacious to the listener. Yet they seem to have sunk down into the tomb. They are perhaps never heard in concerts at the present day. Those which are only show music may willingly be let go. They lack the diamond sparkle of Scarlatti. But there are others, even among the earlier ones, which are musically too worthy and still too interesting to be so ruthlessly consigned to the grave as the modern temper has consigned them. Have we after all too much pianoforte music as it is? It seems to be more than a change of fashion that keeps Clementi dead. Perhaps it is the shade of the admirable but awful Gradus ad Parnassum over all his other work. Perhaps a man has the right to live immortally by the virtue of but one of his excellencies. In the case of Clementi posterity has chosen to remember only the success of a teacher. The great series of studies or exercises published in 1817 under the usual pompous title of Gradus ad Parnassum alone of all his work still retains some general attention.
And this in spite of many beauties in his sonatas. Even among the early ones there are some distinguished by a fineness of feeling and a true if not great gift of musical expression. Take, for example, the sonata in G minor, number three of the seventh opus. The first movement, allegro con spirito, has more to recommend it than unusual formal compactness and perfection. The opening theme has a color not in the power of the mere music-maker. It is true that there is the almost ever-present scale passage in the transition to the second theme; but the second theme itself has a grace of movement and even a certain sinuousness of harmony that cannot but suggest Mozart. There are sudden accents and rough chords that foreshadow a mannerism of Beethoven; and the full measure of silence before the restatement begins is a true romantic touch.
The spirit of the slow movement is perhaps a trifle perfunctory. There is little hint of Mozart, who, alone of the classical composers, could somehow always keep the wings of his music gently fluttering through the leaden tempo adagio. The sharp—one may well say shocking—sudden fortissimos herald Beethoven again. The movement is, however, blessedly short; and the final presto is full of fire and dark, flaring and subsiding by turns.
Of the later sonatas that in B minor, op. 40, No. 2, and that in G minor, op. 50, No. 3, have been justly admired. Yet excellent as they are, one can hardly pretend to do more than lay a tribute on their graves. Only some unforeseen trump can rouse them from what seems to be their eternal sleep. One feature of the former may be noted: the return of a part of the slow movement in the midst of the rapid last movement. Such a process unites at least the last two movements very firmly together, tends to make of the sonata as a whole something more than a series of independent movements put in line according to the rule of convention.
The sonata in G minor also seems to have an organic life as a whole. Clementi gave it a title, Didone abbandonata, and called the whole a scena tragica. This is treating the whole sonata as a drama based upon a single idea; but inasmuch as it was written probably between 1820 and 1821, this conception of the sonata probably came to him from Beethoven rather than from his own idealism.[25]
It is hard to turn our thumbs down on Clementi. It may be unjust as well. He entered the arena of the sonata and in many ways no man excelled him there. Mozart’s impulsive condemnation has gone hard with him. We are like sheep, and even the wisest will listen all but unquestioning to a man who had, if ever man had, the voice of an angel. And so Clementi is all but forgotten as a sonatorial gladiator and remembered only as a trainer. That the greatest of the fighters profited by his teaching cannot be doubted. That they despoiled him of many ideas and even of his finery before his flesh was cold is also true. They made better use of them.
A glance over Clementi’s sonatas can hardly astonish more than by what it reveals of the great commonness of musical idioms during the Viennese period. Phrase after phrase and endless numbers of fragments bob up with the features we had thought were only Haydn’s, or Mozart’s, or Beethoven’s. Mozart quite openly appropriated a theme from one of Clementi’s sonatas[26] as the basis of his overture to the ‘Magic Flute.’ Such a fact is, however, far less suggestive than the intangible similarity between the stuff Clementi used and that which his greater contemporaries in Vienna built with. Compare, for instance, the first movement of Clementi’s sonata in B-flat, op. 34, No. 2, with the first movement of Beethoven’s symphony in C minor. Likeness of treatment, likeness of skill, likeness of mood there are not; but the juxtaposition of the two movements creates a whisper that Clementi passed through music side by side with some of the greatest of all composers.