Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

SONATA 523
before Beethoven's time is J. L. Dussek, who
was born ten years after Clementi, and soon
after Mozart. His most noteworthy characteristics
are an individual, though not incisive
style, and an instinct of a high order for the
qualities and requirements of the pianoforte.
There is some diversity in point of value between
his early and his later sonatas. The former
are rather narrow in idea and structure, whereas
the latter, such as op. 70 in Ab, are quite
remarkable for freedom and elaboration of form
and subject. Both in this sonata and in the
op. 77 he makes use of the hitherto almost
unknown device of extending the effect of the
first sections by subordinate transitions as well
as by accessory subjects. In the first movement
of op. 70 there is the unusual feature of a happy
modulation out and back again in the actual
substance of the second subject—a characteristic
which is common enough in the works of such
modems as Schumann and Brahms, but was
exceedingly rare in Dussek's time. Another
characteristic which Dussek has in common
with more modern writers is the infusion of a
certain amount of sense and sentiment even into
his passages and flourishes, which with his
immediate predecessors had been too commonly
barren. He also takes thought to enliven
his recapitulations by variation or ingeniously
diversified transposition of order in the ideas
(as in op. 77). His writing for the instrument
is brUliant and sparkling, and has certain premonitions
of Weber in it. The ideas are sometimes,
even in his best works, trite and vapid,
but more often delicate and attractive. The
slow movements have a sustained and serious
manner, also unusual in his time, and said to
be derived from his having studied the organ
considerably in his younger days. He stands
historically with giants on either hand, and
this has contributed to make him appear somewhat
of a parenthesis in the direct course of
Their vastness of artistic
proportion did not however suppress his personality,
or extinguish his individuality, which
is still clear in his own line, and has exerted
some influence both upon the modem style of
playing and also upon the style of musical
thought of a few modem composers for the
pianoforte to whom the giants did not strongly
sonata development.
appeal.
The direct line of development after Haydn,
Mozart, and Clementi is obviously continued
in Beethoven. As we have pointed out, the
changes which took place after Emanuel Bach's
labours were less rapid and remarkable than in
times preceding. The finishing touches had
been put to the structural system, and men
were so delighted with its perfection as structure,
that they were content to hear it repeated over
and over again without calling for variety or
individuality in the treatment, and very often
without caring much about the quality of the
thing said. The other side of development was
technical. The pianoforte being a new instrument,
the manner of musical speech best adapted
to it had to be discovered. With the earlier
composers forms of expression better suited to
other instruments were adopted ;
but by degrees
experiments in efl'eot and assiduous attention
to the capabilities of the hand, such as Clementi
gave in his early years, had brought the
mechanism of expression to a tolerably consistent
and complete state ; so that when Beethoven
appeared he was spared the waste of force
incident to having to overcome elementary
problems of instrumental technique, and the
waste of effect incidental to compromises, and
was enabled to concentrate all his powera upon
the musical material.
Beethoven's works introduce a new element
into the problem, and one that complicates
matters iinmeasurably. With his predecessors
structural simplicity had been a paramount
consideration, and often straitened somewhat
the freedom of the idea. The actual subjects
seem drilled into a regular shape, admitting of
very little variation, in order that the development
of the movement might march direct and
undeviating in its familiar course. Musicians
had arrived at that artificial state of mind which
deliberately chose to be conscious of formal
elements. Their misconception was a natural
one. The existing conditions of art might lead
a man to notice that uncultivated people
delighted in simple and single tunes, and that
cultivated people enjoyed the combination of
several, when disposed according to certain laws,
and to conclude from this that the disposition
was of more importance than the matter. But,
in fact, the mind is led from point to point by
feelings which follow the ideas, and of these
and their interdependence and development it is
necessarily conscious ; but of the form it is
not actively conscious unless the ideas have not
sufficient force to possess it, or the necessities of
logical consequence are outrageously violated.
It is only under peculiar social and intellectual
conditions that structural qualities can be so
excessively emphasised. The production of a
genuine master must be ultimately reducible to
logical analysis, but not on the spot or at once
;
and to insist upon art being so immediately
verifiable is not only to set the conclusion to be
drawn from its historical development upside
down, but to refer the enjoyment of its highest
achievements to the contemplation of diy bones.
The imagination and the reason must both be
satisfied, but before all things the imagination.
In the middle years of the 18th century the
imaginative side had not a fair chance. Music
was too much dependent upon the narrow limits
of the taste of polite circles, and the field of
appeal to emotion was not free. But when at
last the natural man threw off' the incubus that
had so long oppressed him, the spiritual uprising