Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

516 SONATA
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The formal pauses on familiar points ^f 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 Philipp
Emanuel, 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 Emanuel did not restrict himself to it ;
yet
his predecessors used it often. It is evident
therefore that his claims to a foremost place
Among these, most
rest upon other grounds.
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
the musical public in a way they had not felt
before. His influence was paramount to give
a decided direction to clavier-playing, and it is
possible that the style of which he was the
foster-father passed on continuously to the
masterly treatment of the pianoforte by
dementi, and through him to the culminating
achievements of Beethoven.
In respect of structure, most of his important
sonatas are in three movements, of which the
first and last are quick, and the middle one
slow ; and this is a point by no means insignificant
in the history of the sonata, as it represents
a definite and characteristic balance between
the principal divisions, in respect of style and
expression as well as in the external traits of
form. Many of these are in clear binary form,
like those of his elder brother, and his admirable
predecessor, yet to be noted, P. Domenico Paradies.
He adopts sometimes the old type,
dividing the recapitulation in the second half
of the movement ; sometimes the later, and
sometimes the composite type. For the most
part he is contented with the opportunities for
variety which this form supplies, and casts a
greater proportion of movements in it than
most other composers, even to the extent of
having all movements in a work in different
phases of the same form, which in. later times
was rare. On the other hand, he occasionally
experiments in structures as original as could
well be devised. There is a Sonata in F minor
which has three main divisions corresponding
to movements. The first, an Allegro, approaches
vaguely to binary form ; the second, an Adagio,
is in rough outline like simple primary form,
concluding with a curious barless cadenza ; the
last is a Fantasia of the most elaborate and
adventurous description, full of experiments in
modulation, enharmonic and otherwise, changes
of time, abrupt surprises and long passages
entirely divested of bar lines. There is no
definite subject, and no method in the distribution
of keys. It is more like a rhapsodical
improvisation of a most inconsequent and unconstrained
description than the product of
concentrated purpose, such as is generally
expected in a sonata movement. This species
of experiment has not survived in high-class
modern music, except in the rarest cases. It
was however not unfamiliar in those days,
and superb examples in the same spirit were
provided by John Sebastian, such as the Fantasia