Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/576

564 in character, have genuine traits of musical expression and clearness of workmanship.

In the same year with Dr. Arne was born Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the eldest son of John Sebastian. He was probably the most gifted, the most independent, and unfortunately the wildest and most unmanageable of that remarkable family. Few of his compositions are known, and it is said that he would not take the trouble to write unless he was driven to it. Two sonatas exist, which are of different type, and probably represent different periods of his chequered career. One in D major, for its richness, elaborateness, expressiveness, is well worthy of the scion of so great a stock; the other is rather cheap, and though masterly in handling and disposition of structural elements, has more traces of the elegance which was creeping over the world of music than of the grave and earnest nobleness of his father and similar representatives of the grand period. The first, in D, is probably the most remarkable example, before Beethoven, of original ingenuity manipulating sonata-form under the influence of fugal associations and by means of contrapuntal devices. The whole is worked out with careful and intelligible reasoning, but to such an elaborate extent that it is quite out of the question to give even a complete outline of its contents. The movements are three—Un poco allegro, Adagio, Vivace. The first and last are speculative experiments in binary form. The first half in each represents the balance of expository sections in tonic and complementary keys. The main subject of the first reappears in the bass in the second section, with a new phase of the original accompaniment in the upper parts. The development portion is in its usual place, but the recapitulation is tonally reversed. The first subject and section is given in a relative key to balance the complementary key of the second section, and the second section is given in the original key or tonic of the movement; so that instead of repeating one section and transposing the other in recapitulation, they are both transposed analogously. In each of the three movements the ends of the halves correspond, and not only this but the graceful little figure appended to the cadence is the same in all the movements, establishing thereby a very delicate but sensible connection between them. This figure is as follows:—

The formal pauses on familiar points of harmony characteristic of later times are conspicuously few, the main divisions being generally marked by more subtle means. The whole sonata is so uncompromisingly full of expressive figures, and would require to be so elaborately phrased and 'sung' to be intelligible, that an adequate performance would be a matter of considerable difficulty. The second Sonata, in C, has quite a different appearance. It is also in three movements—Allegro, Grave, and Vivace. The first is a masterly, clear and concise example of binary form of the type which is more familiar in the works of Haydn and Mozart. The second is an unimportant intermezzo leading directly into the Finale, which is also in binary form of the composite type. The treatment is the very reverse of the previous sonata. It is not contrapuntal, nor fugal. Little pains are taken to make the details expressive; and the only result of using a bigger and less careful brush is to reduce the interest to a minimum, and to make the genuineness of the utterances seem doubtful, because the writer appears not to have taken the trouble to express his best thoughts.

Wilhelm Friedemann's brother, Carl Philip Emmanuel, his junior by a few years, was the member of the younger family who attained the highest reputation as a representative composer of instrumental music and a writer on that subject. His celebrity is more particularly based on the development of sonata-form, of which he is often spoken of as the inventor. True, his sonatas and writings obtained considerable celebrity, and familiarity induced people to remark things they had overlooked in the works of other composers. But in fact he is neither the inventor nor the establisher of sonata-form. It was understood before his day, both in details and in general distribution of movements. One type obtained the reputation of supreme fitness later, but it was not nearly always adopted by Haydn, nor invariably by Mozart, and was consistently departed from by Beethoven; and Emmanuel did not restrict himself to it; yet his predecessors used it often. It is evident therefore that his claims to a foremost place rest upon other grounds. Among these, most prominent is his comprehension and employment of the art of playing and expressing things on the clavier. He understood it, not in a new sense, but in one which was nearer to public comprehension than the treatment of his father. He grasped the phase to which it had arrived, by constant development in all quarters; he added a little of his own, and having a clear and ready-working brain, he brought it home to