Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/573

SONATA. noble and deeply-felt things could be expressed in the characteristically modern manner. Though he looked further into the future in matters of expression and harmonic combination than any composer till the present century, he still had to use forms of the contrapuntal and fugal order for the expression of his highest thoughts. He did occasionally make use of binary form, though not in these Sonatas. But he more commonly adopted, and combined with more or less fugal treatment, an expansion of simple primary form to attain structural effect. Thus, in the second movements of the first and second Sonatas, in the last of the third and sixth, and the first of the sixth, he marks first a long complete section in his principal key, then takes his way into modulations and development, and discussion of themes and various kinds of contrapuntal enjoyment, and concludes with simple complete recapitulation of the first section in the principal key. Bach thus stands singularly aside from the direct line of the development of the Sonata as far as the structural elements are concerned. His contributions to the art of expression, to the development of resource, and to the definition and treatment of ideas had great effect, and are of the very highest importance to instrumental music; but his almost invariable choice of either the suite-form, or the accepted outlines of the violin sonata, in works of this class, caused him to diverge into a course which with him found its final and supreme limit. In order to continue the work in veins which were yet unexhausted, the path had to be turned a little, and joined to courses which were coming up from other directions. The violin sonata continued to make its appearance here and there as has already been mentioned, but in the course of a generation it was entirely supplanted by the distinct type of clavier sonata.

Meanwhile there was another composer of this time, who appears to stand just as singularly apart from the direct high road as Bach, and who, though he does not occupy a pedestal so high in the history of art, still has a niche by no means low or inconspicuous, and one which he shares with no one. Domenico Scarlatti was Bach's senior by a few years, though not enough to place him in an earlier musical generation; and in fact though his works are so different in quality, they have the stamp that marks them as belonging to the same parallel of time.

His most valuable contributions are in the immense number of sonatas and studies which he wrote for the harpsichord. The distinction between Study and Sonata is not clearly marked with him; it looks as if one included the other in most cases, for the structure and style vary very little, and not necessarily or systematically at all, between one and the other. But whatever they are called they do not correspond in appearance to any form which is commonly supposed to be essential to the Sonata. Neither can they be taken as pure-bred members of the fugal family, nor do they trace their origins to the Suite. They are in fact, in a fair proportion of cases, an attempt to deal with direct ideas in a modern sense, without appealing to the glamour of conscious association, the dignity of science, or the familiarity of established dance rhythms. The connection with what goes before and with what comes after is alike obscure, because of the daring originality with which existing materials are worked upon; but it is not the less inevitably present, as an outline of his structural principles will show.

His utterance is at its best sharp and incisive; the form in which he loves to express himself is epigrammatic; and some of his most effective sonatas are like strings of short propositions bound together by an indefinable sense of consistency and consequence, rather than by actual development. These ideas are commonly brought home to the hearer by the singular practice of repeating them consecutively as they stand, often several times over; in respect of which it is worth remembering that his position in relation to his audience was not unlike that of an orator addressing an uncultivated mob. The capacity for appreciating grand developments of structure was as undeveloped in them as the power of following widely-spread argument and conclusion would be in the mob. And just as the mob-orator makes his most powerful impressions by short direct statements, and by hammering them in while still hot from his lips, so Scarlatti drove his points home by frequent and generally identical reiterations; and then when the time came round to refer to them again, the force of the connection between distant parts of the same story was more easily grasped. The feeling that he did this with his eyes open is strengthened by the fact that even in the grouping of the reiterations there is commonly a perceptible method. For instance, it can hardly be by accident that at a certain point of the movement, after several simple repetitions, he should frequently resort to the complication of repeating several small groups within the repetition of large ones. The following example is a happy illustration of his style, and of his way of elaborating such repetitions.