The close of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 had brought an era of comparative peace. Austria, though deprived of some territory, entered upon a period of prosperity which augured well for the progress of art; Prussia, on the other hand, proceeded upon a career of unprecedented expansion under the enlightened leadership of the great Frederick. The Viennese court, which had patronized music for generations, now became what Burney called it, ‘the musical capital of Europe,’ while Berlin and Potsdam constituted a new centre for the cultivation of the art. Frederick, the friend of Voltaire, though himself a lover of French culture, and preferring the French language to his own, nevertheless encouraged the advancement of things native. He insisted that his subjects patronize home manufactures, affect native customs, and, contrary to Joseph II in Vienna, he engaged German musicians for his court in preference to Italians. The two courts may thus be conceived as the strongholds of the two opposing styles, German and Italian, which in fusing produced the new expressive style that is the most characteristic element of classic music.
II
To make clear this conflict of styles represented by the north and the south, by Berlin and Vienna, respectively, we need only ask the reader to recall what we have said about the music of Bach in Vol. I and that of Pergolesi in the last chapter. In the one we saw the culmination of polyphonic technique upon a modern harmonic basis, a fusion of the old polyphonic and new monodic styles, enriched by infinite harmonic variety, with a wealth of ingenious modulations and chromatic alterations, and a depth of spirit analogous to the religious idealism which we have cited as the dominant intellectual note of post-Reformation Germany. In the other, the direct outcome of the monodic idea, and therefore essentially melodic, we found a consummate grace and lightness, but also a certain shallowness, a desire to please, to tickle the ear rather than to stir the deeper emotions. In the course of time this style came to be absolutely dominated by harmony, through the peculiar agency of the Figured Bass. But instead of an ever-shifting harmonic foundation, an iridescent variety of color, we have here an essentially simple harmonic structure, largely diatonic, and centring closely around the tonic and dominant as the essential points of gravity, swinging the direction of its cadences back and forth between the two, while employing every melodic device to introduce all the variety possible within the limitations of so simple a scheme.
While, then, the style of Bach, and the North Germans, on the one hand, had a predominant unity of spirit it tended to variety of expression; the style of the Italians, on the other hand, brought a variety of ideas with a comparative simplicity of scheme or monotony of expression, which quickly crystallized into stereotyped forms. One of these forms, founded upon the simple harmonic scheme of tonic and dominant, developed, as we have seen, into the instrumental sonata, a type of which the violin sonatas of Corelli and his successors, Francesco Geminiani, Pietro Locatelli, and Giuseppe Tartini, and the piano sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti are excellent examples. Many Italians managed to endow such pieces with a breadth, a song-like sweep of melody, to which their inimitable facility of vocal writing led them quite naturally. Pergolesi especially, as we have said, deserves special merit for the introduction of the so-called ‘singing allegro’ in the first movements of his sonatas. Germans were quick to follow these examples and their innate tendency to variety of expression caused them to add another element—that of rhythmic contrast.[24] Indeed, although the Italian style continued to hold sway throughout Europe long after 1700, we find among its exponents an ever greater number of Germans. Their proclivity for harmonic fullness, pathos, and dignity was, moreover, reinforced by the influence of French orchestral music of the style of Lully and his successors. It was reserved for the Germans, also, to develop the sonata form as we know it to-day, to build it up into that wonderful vehicle for free fancy and for the philosophic development of musical ideas.
Before introducing the reader to the men of this epoch, who prepared the way for Haydn and Mozart, we are obliged, for a better understanding of their work, to describe briefly the nature and development of that form which serves, so to speak, as a background to their activity.
Certain successive epochs in the history of our art have been so dominated by one or another type of music that they might as aptly derive their names from the particular type in fashion as the early Christian era did from plain-chant. Thus the sixteenth century might well be called the age of the madrigal, the early seventeenth the period of accompanied monody, and the late seventeenth the epoch of the suite. As the vogue of any of these forms increases, a chain of conventions and rules invariably grows up which tends first to fix it, then to force it into stereotypes which become the instrument of mediocre pedants. The very rules by which it grows to perfection become the shackles which arrest its expansion. Thus it usually deteriorates almost immediately after it has reached its highest elevation at the hand of genius, unless it gives way to the broadening, liberalizing assaults of iconoclasts, and only in the measure to which it is capable of adapting itself to broader principles is further life vouchsafed to it. It continues then to exist beyond the period which is, so to speak, its own, in a sort of afterglow of glory, less brilliant but infinitely richer in interest, color and all-pervading warmth. All the types above mentioned, from the madrigal down, have continued to exist, in a sense, to our time, and, though our age is obviously as antagonistic to the spirit of the madrigal as it is to that of plain-chant, we might cite modern part-songs partaking of the same spirit which have a far stronger appeal. The modern symphonic suites of a Bizet or a Rimsky-Korsakoff as compared to the orchestral suite of the eighteenth century furnish perhaps the most striking case in point.
The period which this and the following chapters attempt to describe is dominated by the sonata form. Not a composer of instrumental music—and it was essentially the age of instrumental music—but essayed that form in various guises. Even the writers of opera did not fail to adopt it in their instrumental sections, and even in their arias. But the decades which are our immediate concern represent a formative stage, because there is much variety, much uncertainty, both in nomenclature and in the matter itself. Nomenclature is never highly specialized at first. A name primarily denotes a variety of things which have perhaps only slight marks of resemblance. Thus we have seen how sonata, derived from the verb suonare, to sound, is at first a name for any instrumental piece, in distinction to cantata, a vocal piece. The canzona da sonar (or canzon sonata) symbolized the application of the vocal style to instruments, and the abbreviation ‘sonata’ was for a time almost synonymous with sinfonia, as in the first solo sonatas (for violin) of Bagio Marini about 1617. The sonata in its modern sense is essentially a solo form; but, during a century or more of its evolution, the most familiar guise under which it appeared was the ‘trio-sonata.’ That, as we have seen, broadened out to symphonic proportions (while adapting some of the features of the orchestral suite) and the sonata became more specifically a solo piece, or, better, a group of pieces, for the sonata of our day is a ‘cyclical’ piece. But through all its outward manifestations, and irrespective of them, it underwent a definite and continuous metamorphosis, by which it assumed a more and more definite pattern, or patterns, which eventually fused into one.
The ‘cycle sonata’ undoubtedly had its root idea in the dance suite, and for a long time that derivation was quite evident. The minuet, obstinately holding its place in the scheme until Beethoven converted it into the scherzo, was the last birthmark to disappear. The variety of rhythm that the dance suite offers is also clearly preserved in the principle of rhythmic contrasts between the movements. These comprise usually a rapid opening movement embodying the essentials of the ‘sonata form’; a contrasting slow movement, shorter and in less conventional form—sometimes aria, sometimes ‘theme and variations’—stands next; the finale, in the lighter Italian form, was usually a quick dance movement or short, brilliant piece of slight significance; in the German and more developed examples it was often a rondo (one principal theme recurring at intervals throughout the piece with fresh ‘episodical’ matter interspersed), and more and more frequently it was cast in the first-movement form. Between the slow movement and the finale is the place for the minuet (if the sonata is in four movements). Haydn, though not the first so to use it, quickened its tempo and enriched it in content. A second minuet (Menuetto II) appears in the earlier symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, which by and by is incorporated with the first as ‘trio’—the familiar alternate section always followed by a repeat of the minuet itself.
Of course, the distinguishing feature of the sonata over all other forms is the peculiar pattern of at least one of its movements—most usually the first—the outcome of a long evolution, which, in its finally settled form, with the later Mozart and with Beethoven, became the most efficient, the most flexible, and the most convincing medium for the elaboration of musical ideas. The ‘first-movement form,’ as it has been called, appears in the eighteenth century in either of two primary patterns: the binary (consisting of two sections), and the ternary (consisting of three). The binary, gradually introduced by the Italians, notably Pergolesi and Alberti, is simply a broadening of the ‘song-form’ in two sections (each of which is repeated), having one single theme or subject, presented in the following key arrangement (‘A’ denoting the tonic or ‘home’ key and ‘B’ the dominant or related key): |:A—B:| |:B—A:|. This, with broadened dimensions and more definite thematic distinction, within each section gave way to: |:A¹—B²:||:B¹—A²:| (¹ and ² representing first and second theme, respectively). In this arrangement the second section simply reproduces the thematic material of the first, but in the reverse order of keys or tonality. It should be added that the ‘second theme’ was usually, at this early stage of development, a mere suggestion, an embryo with very slight individuality. The leading representatives of this type of form as applied to the suite as well as the sonata were Pergolesi, Domenico Alberti, Handel, J. S. Bach, J. F. Fasch, Domenico Scarlatti, Locatelli, and Gluck, and most of the later Italians, who continued to prefer this easily comprehended form, placing but simple problems of musicianship before the composer. It was eminently suited to the easy grace of polite music, of the ‘salon’ music of the eighteenth century.
But in the works of German suite writers especially the restatement of the first theme after the double bar displays almost from the beginning a tendency toward variety, abridgment, expansion, and modulation of harmony. Gradually this section assumed such a bewildering, fanciful character, such a variety of modulations, that the subject in its original form was forgotten by the hearer, and all recollection of the original key had been obliterated from the mind. Composers then grasped the device of restating the first theme in the original key after this free development of it, and then restating the second theme as before. Both the tonic and the dominant elements of the first section (or exposition) are now seen to be repeated in the tonic key in the restatement section (or recapitulation) and the form has assumed the following shape: