Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 4.djvu/503

Rh of the movement (the so-called 'exposition'), is not strictly consistent with the principle of design upon which a Binary movement is founded. In Beethoven's works, which are the best models of a consistent and liberal treatment of Instrumental forms, it is only met with conspicuously and frequently in early works, such as the pianoforte Sonatas up to op. 14; and these obviously belong to a time when he had not so thorough a grip on the form as he obtained afterwards. Among his Symphonies the Eroica is the only striking exception; and in that great work the fact may be explained by the poetical undercurrent in his mind. Among his finest Trios and Quartets an instance is hardly to be found, and the same is the case with Mozart's best Quartetts and Symphonies.

The instances in which new features are introduced in company with figures of the first division of the movement are on a different footing, as their appearance does not then make any break in the development or working out of the principal ideas, which goes on simultaneously, and is for the time only enhanced by fresh by-play. A very happy instance is in the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony in B♭, where a figure of the first subject, after being toyed with for some time is made to serve as an accompaniment to a new and very noticeable phrase. In the following example, (a) is the tune of the first subject in its original form, (b) the passage in the working-out in which it serves as accompaniment to a new feature.

With regard to the harmonic or tonal structure of this part of the movement, composers' minds came to be exercised very early to find some way of infusing order into its apparently indefinite texture. As long as movements were very short it was sufficient merely to pass through a key which had been noticeably absent in the first part; and this object, combined with the traditions of the short dance forms, in which the elementary design of sonata movements was prefigured, to cause stress to be laid on the Subdominant key. But this was soon found to be insufficient to relieve the design of indefiniteness; and composers then hit upon the use of sequences as a way of making their progressions intelligible; and this device is afterwards met with very frequently in the 'working-out' in every variety of treatment, from the simple and obvious successions used by Corelli and Scarlatti, and other masters of the early Italian instrumental school, up to the examples of sequence piled on sequence, and spread in broad expanses with steps of several bars in length, such as are used by Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms.

In order to show how order may be infused into the apparently unrestricted freedom of this part of a movement, the working-out of the first movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony may profitably be examined, as it is singularly clear and simple, both in the development and distribution of figures, and also in the plan upon which the harmonic and tonal successions are distributed.

There is not a single bar in it which is not clearly based upon some figure from the first half of the movement; but it happens that the superior opportunities for development offered by the first subject are so great that it alone serves as the basis of the whole division, the second subject being ignored.

From the melody of the subject five conspicuous figures are extracted for the purposes of development, (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) in the following quotation:—

The working-out begins with the reiteration of the first figure of all, as in Example 3;

and then two bars of the subject are given twice, as if to call the attention of the hearer to the matter to be discussed. The whole process in these eight bars is repeated exactly on other degrees of the scale, for the purposes of design, and this process ends with the figure (b), which thereupon becomes the centre of interest, and taking the form shown in Ex. 4, is launched