Q. But what do you understand by a symphony, sonata or overture?
A. I must again go back, in order to explain this properly.
Revolutions often beat the path for new ideas. Palestrina towers great and unattainable in his compositions of sacred music, which breathe and express the purest catholicism.
But a Luther, Zwingli, and others came, followed soon by Handel and Bach, who, about the middle of the eighteenth century, created a music full of freshness, primitiveness and transporting power, which lived and died with the reformers.
The three grand-masters, Palestrina, Handel and Bach, equal, but do not rival each other. We cannot judge them for the different sentiments they indulged in. The philosophers may settle which is the best religion, for to the necessity of one they all agree, but music cannot be chained by dogmas. Heaven is an orb, whose centre is everywhere. Palestrina’s music is the language of the south, Handel’s and Bach’s that of the north. Though one sun illumes both lands—though one ether spans both, yet in the south the sun is milder, the ether purer. Flowers which there grow in wild abundance, the north must obtain by culture.
We must think at our work.
This necessity of thought is apparent in religion, language and art, and can be seen most clearly in the greatest works of the German grand-masters, in Bach’s “Matthew Passion,” and Handel’s “Israel.”
Sebastian Bach’s astonishing dexterity in thematical works is the reason that even unto this day we do not find a symphony or overture appropriate for a concert, of which the single motive forming the principal thought of the movement is not worked up on the basis which he constructed with such deep knowledge and skill.
To him we must retrace our steps, in order to perceive the true nature of our instrumental music, for we are as little masters of the course of our ideas, as of the circulation of the blood in our veins. Centuries have passed, and although the first great instrumental-piece—the overture—was a French production, (Lulli was the first master in this genre of art,) yet Bach and Handel impressed the first decided stamp upon it.
Later, the overture was supplanted by the symphony, for the reason that it was of easier composition and execution than the former. The overture consisted of a grave, followed by a fugue. The symphony was composed somewhat in the style of a fugue and that of the lively dances of that time.