We must here caution the reader against the supposition that music at this particular time leaped suddenly forward. The tendencies that we have been speaking of were latent long before Philip Emanuel Bach appeared, and there was no strict line of demarcation where one kind of music stopped and another began. Organic development never progresses in that way; each phase of it begins slowly, becomes eventually operative, and dies as slowly as it began. And there were other composers working at that time on the same problems; composers who were of considerable importance then, but whose names are now forgotten.
EXAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS, No. 12.
Philip Emanuel Bach: Piano Sonata [23] in F-Minor, First Movement.
This Sonata has three movements: 1. Fast (Allegro assai); 2. Slow (Andante cantabile); 3. Slow (Andantino grazioso). The third of these is marked "attacca" to indicate that the usual pause between the movements is to be omitted. In the second and third movements the themes themselves and their treatment reveal the tentative nature of Bach's efforts. Each of these themes is over-embellished; each has something of the vagueness usual in piano music of his time, and yet there is a distinct tendency towards definite, strophic melody such as is common in the sonatas of Haydn and Mozart.
But the first movement of this sonata of Philip Emanuel Bach's is quite remarkable. Its theme is definite, its phraseology clear and concise, and its form well rounded. In fact a comparison of the opening measures with those of the theme from Beethoven's first sonata will reveal a decided similarity. Beethoven's theme is constructed from a figure or phrase, ascending like an arpeggio higher and higher, until a climax is reached, after which the melody dies down to a pause or half cadence on the dominant chord. This is precisely what happens with the theme of Philip Emanuel Bach, although the second half of the theme is more regular than Beethoven's, the complete melody being in what might be called "verse form," each two-measure phrase corresponding to a line of verse.
More important still, however, is the quality of the melody itself. It is distinctly in the style suitable for the piano; there is no evidence of the old song melody, nor of polyphonic phraseology, nor of dance tunes. This is, in short, one of the earliest examples of pure pianoforte music, using the term in a modern sense. Another interesting point in this movement is the presence of two contrasting themes in the Exposition. "The principle of alternately stating two contrasting themes, which found its ultimate expression in the successive presentation of first and second subjects, had been familiar to the musical world as long as minuets and trios, gavottes, musettes, and the like, had been in vogue, but the process by which the two subjects are allowed to be interwoven with each other, or to generate, as it were, new material having its origin in something that has gone before, opened out a world of fresh possibilities to the composers of the later times, and gave them opportunities which had been altogether withheld from Bach and his contemporaries." "Oxford History of Music," Vol. IV, p. 141. The two themes constitute the material out of which the whole movement grows or germinates, so that they somewhat resemble characters in a story, and this analogy is further carried out in the quality of the themes themselves, the first being usually vigorous and to a certain degree non-lyric, while the second is lyric and more sentimental; as if one were masculine and the other feminine.
But in this movement of Philip Emanuel Bach's Sonata the second theme is hardly more than an embryo. It begins at measure 16, and occupies only ten measures, the last five of which are somewhat vague and rhapsodical. Thus its entire effect is somewhat indefinite, and if we compare it with the second theme of any modern sonata we shall realize that it is very imperfectly individualized. The second theme did not become an essential and distinct element of sonata-form until somewhat later; in Philip Emanuel Bach, and even in many movements of Haydn, it remains completely subordinate to its more important companion, the first theme. Following the second theme—at measure 26—a coda ensues. This important factor in musical form has been already referred to in our chapters on "The Rondo" and "The Variation." Its office here is the same as in former examples, namely, to round out this part of the movement properly and to emphasize the close of the first section.
The exposition (A) extends through measure 34 and is concluded with a double-bar. During the period from Philip Emanuel Bach to Mozart this portion of the movement was always repeated in order to make it perfectly familiar to the listener. The development section begins immediately after the double-bar and extends to the point where the first theme returns in its original form; in this movement that point is reached at measure 66. We have already pointed out certain simple methods of generation in music, as in the Bach Gavotte discussed in Chapter IV, but we now have to consider the growth of a long section of a composition from certain germs contained in the original theme. And this brings up an important question: How do musical themes generate? In the Bach Gavotte a brief phrase of one measure duration blossoms out into a passage six measures long. This may be observed by reference to Figure XXXIV, in which (a) represents the original phrase and (b) the expansion of it.
(a.)