In the previous chapter it was stated that the various dances,
such as the minuet, sarabande, allemande, etc., led up to
our modern sonata form, or, perhaps, to put it more clearly,
they led up to what we call sonata form. As a matter of fact,
already in the seventeenth century, we find the word _sonata_
applied to musical compositions; generally to pieces for the
violin, but rarely for the harpsichord. The word sonata
was derived originally from the Italian word _suonare_,
"to sound," and the term was used to distinguish instrumental
from vocal music. The latter was sung (_cantata_), the former
was sounded (_suonata_) by instruments. Thus many pieces were
called _suonatas_; the distinguishing point being that they were
_played_ and not sung. Organ sonatas existed as far back as 1600
and even earlier, but the earliest application of the word seems
to have been made in connection with pieces for the violin.
Dances were often grouped together, especially when they had
some slight intrinsic musical value. Probably the term _sonata_
first designated a composition in one of these dance forms
not intended for dancing. Gradually groups of dances were
called _suites_; then, little by little, the dance titles of
the separate numbers were dropped, and the _suite_ was called
_sonata_. These different numbers, however, retained their
dance characteristics, as we shall see later. The arrangement
of the pieces composing the _suites_ differed in various
countries. There were French, Italian, German, and English
suites, generally, however, retaining the same grouping of
the different movements. The first movement consisted of an
_allemande_; then came a _courante_; then a _minuet_; then
a _sarabande_; and last of all a _gigue_; all in the same
key. Sometimes the _minuet_ and _sarabande_ changed places,
just as in modern times do the _andante_ and _scherzo_.
Already in 1685, when Corelli's sonatas for strings appeared,
the custom of decreasing the number of movements to three began
to obtain, and a century later this custom was universal. The
_allemande_, _overture_, or _preludio_ formed the first
movement; the second consisted of the _sarabande_, the ancestor
of our _adagio_; and the last part was generally a _gigue_. Even
when the dance titles were no more used (the music having long
outgrown its original purpose), the distinctive characteristics
of these different movements were retained; the _sarabande_
rhythm was still adhered to for the _adagio_ (even by Haydn)
and the triple time and rhythm of the _gigue_ were given to
the last part. In addition to this, these three movements
were often kept in one key. In his first sonatas Beethoven
added a movement, generally a _minuet_, to this scheme; but
returned to the three-movement structure later. His Op. 111
has only two movements, in a way returning to a still earlier
general form of the sonata. Now, as has already been said,
some of the earliest examples of instrumental music were
mainly descriptive in character, that is to say, consisting
of imitations of _things_, thus marking the most elementary
stage of programme music. Little by little composers became
more ambitious and began to attempt to give expression to
the emotions by means of music; and at last, with Beethoven,
"programme music" may be said, in one sense, to have reached
its climax. For although it is not generally realized, he
wrote every one of his sonatas with definite subjects, and,
at one time, was on the point of publishing mottoes to them,
in order to give the public a hint of what was in his mind
when he wrote them.
Analysis may be considered as the reducing of a musical
composition to its various elements--harmony, rhythm,
melody--and power of expression. Just as melody may be analyzed
down to the motives and phrases of which it consists, so may
the expressiveness of music be analyzed; and this latter study
is most valuable, for it brings us to a closer understanding
of the power of music as a language.
For the sake of clearness we will group music as follows:
1. Dance forms.
2. Programme music. (Things. Feelings.)
3. The gathering together of dances in suites.
4. The beginnings of design.
5. The merging of the suite into the sonata.
The dance tunes I need hardly quote; they consist of a mere play
of sound to keep the dancers in step, for which purpose any more
or less agreeable rhythmical succession of sounds will serve.
If we take the next step in advance of instrumental music
we come to the giving of meanings to these dances, and, as I
have explained, these meanings will at first have reference
to things; for instance, Couperin imitates an alarm clock;
Rameau tries to make the music sound as if three hands were
playing instead of two (_Les trois mains_); he imitates sighing
(_Les soupirs_); the scolding voice; he even tries to express a
mood musically (_L'indifferente_). In Germany, these attempts
to make instrumental music expressive of something beyond
rhythmic time-keeping continued, and we find Carl Philip
Emanuel Bach attempting to express light-hearted amiability (_La
complaisance_) and even languor (_Les tendres langueurs_). The
suite, while it combined several dances in one general form,
shows only a trace of _design_. There was more design in one
of the small programme pieces already quoted than in most of
the suites of this period (see, for example, Loeilly's "Suite").
Bach possessed instinctively the feeling for musical speech
which seemed denied to his contemporaries whenever they had no
actual story to guide their expression; and even in his dance
music we find coherent musical sentences as, for instance,
in the _Courante_ in A.
In art our opinions must, in all cases, rest directly on the
thing under consideration and not on what is written about
it. In my beliefs I am no respecter of the written word,
that is to say, the mere fact that a statement is made by
a well-known man, is printed in a well-known work, or is
endorsed by many prominent names, means nothing to me if the
thing itself is available for examination. Without a thorough
knowledge of music, including its history and development,
and, above all, musical "sympathy," individual criticism is,
of course, valueless; at the same time the acquirement of this
knowledge and sympathy is not difficult, and I hope that we may
yet have a public in America that shall be capable of forming
its own ideas, and not be influenced by tradition, criticism,
or fashion.
We need to open our eyes and see for ourselves instead
of trusting the direction of our steps to the guidance of
others. Even an opinion based on ignorance, frankly given,
is of more value to art than a platitude gathered from some
outside source. If it is not a platitude but the echo of some
fine thought, it only makes it worse, for it is not sincere,
unless of course it is quoted understandingly. We need
freshness and sincerity in forming our judgments in art, for
it is upon these that art lives. All over the world we find
audiences listening suavely to long concerts, and yet we do
not see one person with the frankness of the little boy in
Andersen's story of the "New Clothes of the Emperor." It is
the same with the other arts. I have never heard anyone say
that part of the foreground of Millet's "Angelus" is "muddy"
or that the Fornarina's mysterious smile is anything but
"hauntingly beautiful." People do not dare admire the London
Law Courts; all things must be measured by the straight lines
of Grecian architecture. Frankness! Let us have frankness,
and if we have no feelings on a subject, let us remain silent
rather than echo that drone in the hive of modern thought,
the "_authority_ in art."
Every person with even the very smallest love and sympathy for
art possesses ideas which are valuable to that art. From the
tiniest seeds sometimes the greatest trees are grown. Why,
therefore, allow these tender germs of individualism to
be smothered by that flourishing, arrogant bay tree of
tradition--fashion, authority, convention, etc.
My reason for insisting on the importance of all lovers of
art being able to form their own opinions is obvious, when we
consider that our musical public is obliged to take everything
on trust. For instance, if we read on one page of some history
(every history of music has such a page) that Mozart's sonatas
are sublime, that they do not contain one note of mere filigree
work, and that they far transcend anything written for the
harpsichord or clavichord by Haydn or his contemporaries, we
echo the saying, and, if necessary, quote the "authorities." Now
if one had occasion to read over some of the clavichord music
of the period, possibly it might seem strange that Mozart's
sonatas did not impress with their magnificence. One might
even harbour a lurking doubt as to the value of the many
seemingly bare runs and unmeaning passages. Then one would
probably turn back to the authorities for an explanation and
find perhaps the following: "The inexpressible charm of Mozart's
music leads us to forget the marvellous learning bestowed upon
its construction. Later composers have sought to conceal the
constructional points of the sonata which Mozart never cared to
disguise, so that incautious students have sometimes failed to
discern in them the veritable 'pillars of the house,' and have
accused Mozart of poverty of style because he left them boldly
exposed to view, as a great architect delights to expose the
piers upon which the tower of his cathedral depends for its
support." (Rockstro, "History of Music," p. 269.) Now this
is all very fine, but it is nonsense, for Mozart's sonatas
are anything but cathedrals. It is time to cast aside this
shibboleth of printer's ink and paper and look the thing itself
straight in the face. It is a fact that Mozart's sonatas are
compositions entirely unworthy of the author of the "Magic
Flute," or of any composer with pretensions to anything beyond
mediocrity. They are written in a style of flashy harpsichord
virtuosity such as Liszt never descended to, even in those of
his works at which so many persons are accustomed to sneer.
Such a statement as I have just made may be cried down as
rank heresy, first by the book readers and then by the general
public; but I doubt if anyone among that public would or could
actually turn to the music itself and analyze it intelligently,
from both an aesthetic and technical standpoint, in order to
verify or disprove the assertion.
Once a statement is made it seems to be exceedingly difficult
to keep it from obtaining the universal acceptance which it
gains by unthinking reiteration in other works. One of the
strangest cases of this repetition of a careless statement may
be found in the majority of histories of music, where we are
told that musical expression (that is to say, the increasing
and diminishing of a tone, crescendo and diminuendo) was
first _discovered_ at Mannheim, in Germany, about 1760. This
statement may be found in the works of Burney, Schubart,
Reichardt, Sittard, Wasielewski, and even in Jahn's celebrated
"Life of Mozart." The story is that Jommelli, an Italian,
first "invented" the crescendo and diminuendo, and that when
they were first used, the people in the audience gradually
rose from their seats at the crescendo, and as the music
"diminuendoed" they sat down again. The story is absurd,
for the simple reason that even in 1705, Sperling, in his
"Principae Musicae," describes crescendos from _ppp_ to _fff_,
and we read in Plutarch of the same thing.
Shedlock, in his work "The Pianoforte Sonata," quotes as the
first sonatas for the clavier those of Kuhnau, and cites
especially the six _Bible_ sonatas. Now Kuhnau, although
he was Bach's predecessor at St. Thomas' Church in Leipzig,
was certainly a composer of the very lowest rank. The _Bible_
sonatas, which Shedlock paints to us in such glowing colours,
are the merest trash, and not to be compared with the works of
his contemporaries. I do not think that they have any place
whatsoever in the history or development either of music or
of that form called the sonata.
The development of the suite from dance forms has already
been shown, and we will now trace the development of the
sonata from the suite in Italy, Germany, and France. As an
example of this development in Italy, a so-called sonata by
G.B. Pescetti will serve (the sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti
were not originally so named, and the sonatas before that were
simply short pieces, so designated to distinguish them from
dance music). This sonata was published about 1730, and was one
of nine. The first movement is practically of the _allemande_
type, and its first period ends in the dominant key. There
is but the slightest trace of a second theme in the first
part; yet the improvement in contrapuntal design over the
suites is evident. The second movement is in the same key,
and retains the characteristic rhythm of the _sarabande_;
at the end, the improvement, so far as design is concerned,
is very noticeable. The last movement, still in the same key,
is a _gigue_, thus keeping well in the shadow of the suite.
A sonata by the German Rolle (1718-1785) is valuable in that
it shows a very decided second theme in the first period,
thus tending toward the development of the original simple
dance form into the more complex sonata form. The _adagio_,
however, still has the _sarabande_ characteristics, and
foreshadows many things. It contains many _words_ that later
were shaped into great poems by others. "The Erlking" of
Schubert is especially hinted at, just as the first movement
was prophetic of Beethoven. In the last movement we have the
_gigue_ rhythm again.
In France, music had become merely a court appendage, as was
the case with the other arts, and had long served as a means
for showing the divine grace with which Louis XIV or XV could
turn out his toes in the minuet. In addition to this, the
arranging of a scientific system of harmonization by Rameau
(1683-1764) (which, by the way, is the basis of most of the
treatises of harmony of the present century), caused the few
French composers who could make headway against the prevailing
Italian opera after Lully to turn their attention away from
polyphonic writing; and having, after all, but little to
express in other than the long-accustomed dance rhythms and
tunes, their music cannot be said to have made any mark in
the world. In order to show the poverty of this style, let
us take a sonata by Mehul (1763-1817). The first movement
has already a well-defined second theme, but otherwise is
a mere collection of more or less commonplace progressions.
The second part is a dance tune, pure and simple; indeed the
first part had all the characteristics of the _farandole_
(see Bizet's "l'Arlesienne"). The last part is entitled rondo,
"a round dance," and is evidently one in the literal sense of
the word. In all these sonatas the increasing use of what is
called the Alberti bass is noticeable.
To show the last link between the suite and the sonata,
reference may be made to the well-known sonata in D major by
Haydn. In this, as in those analyzed above, all the movements
are in the same key. The adagio is a _sarabande_, and the
last movement has the characteristics of the _gigue_. This,
however, is only the starting point with Haydn; later we will
consider the development of this form into what is practically
our modern sonata, which, of course, includes the symphony,
quartet, quintet, concerto, etc.
Our path of study in tracing the development of the sonata from
the suite leads us through a sterile tract of seemingly bare
desert. The compositions referred to are full of fragments,
sometimes fine in themselves, but lying wherever they happened
to fall, their sculptors having no perception of their value
one with another. Disconnected phrases, ideas never completed;
to quote Hamlet, "Words, words!" Later we find Beethoven
and Schubert constructing wonderful temples out of these
same fragments, and shaping these same words into marvellous
tone poems.
The music of the period we have been considering is well
described by Browning in "A Toccata of Galuppi's":
Yes you, like a ghostly cricket,
Creaking where a house was burned:
Dust and ashes, dead and done with,
Venice spent what Venice earned.