Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

—;
Vivacity, humour, genuine fun, are his most
familiar traits. At his best his music sparkles
with life and freshness, and its vitality is
apparently quite unimpaired by age. He rarely
approaches tenderness or sadness, and in the
whole mass of his works there are hardly any
slow movements. He ia not a little ' bohemian,'
and seems positively to revel in curious effects
' sonatas' in the most radical sense of the term
514 SONATA
which is essentially an unfugal proceeding
but the most important matter is that he was
probably the first to attain to clear conception
and treatment of a self-sufBcing effective idea,
and to use it, if without science, yet with
management which is often convincingly successful.
He was not a gi'eat master of the art
of composition, biit he was one of the rarest
masters of his instrument ; and his divination
of the way to treat it, and the perfect adaptation
of his ideas to its requirements, more than
counterbalance any shortcoming in his science.
He was blessed with ideas, and with a style so
essentially his own, that even when his music is
transported to another instrument the characteristic
effects of tone often remain unmistakable.
of consecutive fifths and consecutive octaves.
The characteristic daring of which such thin^
are the most superficial manifestations, joined
with the clearness of his foresight, made him
of closer kinship to Beethoven and Weber, and
even Brahms, than to the typical contrapuntalists
of his day. His works are genuine
self-dependent and self-sufficing sound -pieces,
without programme. To this the distribution of
movements is at least of secondary importance,
and his confining himself to one alone does not
vitiate his title to be a foremost contributor to
that very important branch of the musical art.
No successor was strong enough to wield his
bow. His pupil Durante wrote some sonatas,
consisting of a Studio and a Divertimento apiece,
which have touches of his manner, but without
sufficient of the nervous elasticity to make
them important.
The contemporary writers for clavier of
second rank do not offer much which is of high
musical interest, and they certainly do not
arrive at anything like the richness of thought
and expression which is shown by their fellows
of the violin. There appears, however, amongst
them a tendency to drop the introductory slow
movement characteristic of the violin sonata,
and by that means to draw nearer to the type
of later clavier or pianoforte sonatas. Thus a
sonata of Wagenseil's in F major presents
almost exactly the general outlines to be met
with in Haydn's works—an Allegro assai in
binary form of the old type, a short Andantino
grazioso, and a Tempo di Minuetto. A sonata
of Hasse's in D minor has a similar arrangement
of three movements ending with a Gigue
;
but the first movement is utterly vague and
indefinite in form. There is also an Allegro of
—
Hasse's in Bt>, quoted in Pauer's Alte ' Meister,'
which deserves consideration for the light it
throws on a matter which is sometimes said
to be a crucial distinction between the early
attempts at form and the perfect achievement.
In many of the early examples of sonata-form,
the second section of the first part is characterised
by groups of figures which are quite definite
enough for all reasonable purposes, but do not
come up to the ideas commonly entertained of
the nature of a subject ; and on this ground
the settlement of sonata-form was deferred some
fifty years. Hasse was not a daring originator,
neither was he likely to strike upon a crucial
test of perfection, yet iii this movement he sets
out with a distinct and complete subject in B|>
of a robust Handelian character :
—
and after the usual extension proceeds to F, and
announces by definite emphasis on the Dominant
the well-contrasted second subject, which is
suggestive of the polite reaction looming in the
future :
^^^^^^^
The movement as a whole is in the binary
type of the earlier kind.
The period now approaching is characterised
by uncertainty in the distribution of the movements,
but increasing regujarity and definition
in their internal structure. Some writers follow
the four-movement type of violin sonata in
writing for the clavier ; some strike upon the
grouping of three movements ; and a good many
fall back upon two. A sonata of Galuppi's in
D illustrates the first of these, and throws light
upon the transitional process. The first movement
is a beautiful Adagio of the Arioso type,
with the endings of each half corresponding,
after the manner traced from Corelli ; the second
is an Allegro, not of the fugal or Canzona order,
but clear binary of the older kind, A violin
sonata of Locatelli's, of probably earlier date,
has an AUemande of excellent form in this