Concerning Wagenseil we may recall the anecdote of little Mozart who one evening, on the occasion of his first visit to Vienna, refused to play unless Wagenseil, the greatest of players and composers for harpsichord in Vienna, were present. Dr. Burney visited him some years later and heard him play, old and ailing, with great fire and majesty.
Schobert was, as we have said, of Silesian origin. He came to Paris as a young man, probably by way of Mannheim, some time between 1755 and 1760; and from then on to the time of his death in 1767 adapted his music more and more to the French taste. Hence we find in it a simple but strong expression, an elegant clearness and a touch of that sensibilité larmoyante made fashionable by Rousseau, showing itself in the frequent use of minor keys, evidently at the root of the very personal emotional life of his music.[27] Mozart came very strongly under his influence.
Wagenseil, on the other hand, shows yet more of the Italian influence, so strong even at that day in Vienna, to which Haydn was to owe much. His work lacks emotion and poetry, is facile and brilliant and clear, without much personal color.
In the matter of emotional warmth the sonatas of Emanuel Bach, however vague they may be in form by contrast with those of Schobert and his brother Christian, are distinguished above those of his contemporaries. Emanuel—his full name was Carl Philipp Emanuel—was born in Weimar in March, 1714. An early intent to devote himself to the practice of law was given up because of his marked aptitude for music. In 1740 he entered the service of Frederick the Great as court cembalist. In 1757 he gave up this post and went to Hamburg, where he worked as organist, teacher, and composer until his death there on the fourteenth of December, 1788.
The works by which he is best known are the six sets of sonatas, with rondos and fantasies too, which he published between 1779 and 1787 in Leipzig under the title of Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber (‘Sonatas for Connoisseurs and Amateurs’). Many of the sonatas, however, had been composed before 1779.
An earlier set, dedicated to the Princess Amelia of Prussia and published in 1760, bears the interesting title, Sechs Sonaten fürs Clavier mit veränderten Reprisen (‘Six Sonatas for Clavier with Varied Repeats’). This title, together with Bach’s preface to the set, shows conclusively that in repeating the sections of movements of sonatas, players added some free ornamentation of their own to the music as the composer published it. The practice seems to have been an ancient one, applied to the suite before the sonata came into being. Thus some of the doubles of Couperin and Sebastian Bach may be taken as special efforts on the part of the composers to safeguard their music from the carelessness and lack of knowledge and taste of dilettanti. To what an extent such variation in repeat might go and how much it might add to the richness of the music are shown, for example, by the double of the sarabande in Sebastian Bach’s sixth English suite.
Emanuel Bach’s sonatas are of very unequal merit. The sonata in F minor,[28] published in the third set for Kenner und Liebhaber in 1781, but written nearly twenty years earlier, has little either of extrinsic or intrinsic beauty to recommend it. Not only does the inchoate nature of the second theme in the first movement fail to save the movement from monotony; the first theme itself is stark and devoid of life. There is a lack of smoothness, a constant hitching. The andante is not spontaneous for all its sentimentality, and the final movement is fragmentary.
A sonata in A major, on the other hand, written not long after, and published in 1779, is charming throughout. The first theme in the first movement is conventional enough, but it has sparkle; and though the second theme is not very distinctly different from the first, the movement is full of variety and life. Particularly charming are the measures constituting an unusually long epilogue to the first section. The harmonies are richly colored, if not striking; and the use of the epilogue in the development section is most effective. So is the full measure pause before the cascade of sound which flows into the restatement. The andante is over-ornamented, but the harmonic groundwork is solid and interesting. The last movement suggests Scarlatti, and has the animated and varied flow which characterizes the first.
A sonata in A minor, written about 1780 and published in the second series for Kenner und Liebhaber, is in many ways typical of Emanuel Bach at his best. There is still in the first movement that vagueness of structure which may usually be attributed to the lack of distinctness of his second theme. But the first theme has a fine declamatory vigor, in the spirit of the theme out of which his father built the fifth fugue in the first book of the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord’; and the movement as a whole has the broad sweep of a brilliant fantasy.
The andante, with its delicate imitations, foreshadowing Schumann, is full of poetic sentiment. It leads without break into the rapid final movement. Here the declamatory spirit of the first movement reigns again, but in lighter mood. There is in fact an unmistakable kinship between the first and last movements, which must be felt though it cannot be traced to actual thematic relationship. Here is a sonata, then, which, though divided into three movements, seems sprung of one fundamental idea.