The Sonate auf Concertenart: A Postmodern Invention? David ...

31
See appendix, extract 5.
Sonate auf Concertenart, p. 13
("inherently" or "intrinsically") and Wesen ("essence") refer, in a pedantically Aristotelian manner,
to that which defines the concerto--that is, what distinguishes it from other types of music. For
Scheibe, it is the presence of soloists (concertato parts) that does this, just as in "ordinary"
31
sonatas it is the fugal working-out of a "regular melody." Thus it must be what we call solo
32
episodes, not ritornellos, that define (are "essential" to) the concerto. But Scheibe's neat
distinction between works auf Concertenart and auf Fugenart is belied by the pervasive use of
permutational structures not only in Bach's concertos but in concertos with multiple soloists by
Vivaldi and others. Indeed, Scheibe recognizes that the distinction breaks down in concertos with
multiple soloists. 33
Thus one must wonder to what degree the presence of distinct solo episodes really did
characterize the concerto to the exclusion of other types of instrumental music, particularly during
the first decades of the century. This is so even when writers clearly refer--as Mattheson and
Scheibe certainly do--to what we call solo concertos, as opposed to the concerto grosso or the
so-called group concerto. The archetypal solo violin sonatas of Corelli include several movements
resembling what are now sometimes termed "concertante" fugues, in which one or more episodes
34
are comprised of passagework that we tend to view as concerto-like. The fugues in Bach's three
sonatas for unaccompanied violin follow similar designs, and numerous commentators have
pointed to comparable patterns in many of Bach's organ preludes. Yet it does not follow that the
latter were modeled on concerto movements, for, as Williams suggests, the underlying formal
principle is more universal than that.
For Scheibe the essential difference between sonatas and concertos may actually have lain
not in their overall designs but in the more contrapuntal texture (and thus more conservative style)
of the sonata. Indeed, Scheibe's word Concertenart is best understood in opposition to his
Fugenart, which for him is the appropriate manner for the first quick movement of an "ordinary"
32
Marissen, in both "A Trio" and "A Critical Appraisal," supplements Scheibe's expression
"those passages" by identifying the latter as the ritornellos (he quotes the translation of Scheibe's
passage from The Bach Reader, 234). He is followed by Dreyfus (Bach and the Patterns, 105),
Zohn ("The Ensemble Sonatas," 437), and Swack, who views the ritornello as "the concerto's
most distinctive marker" while regarding the exchange of material between parts as "more typical
of the conventional trio sonata" ("Bach's A-Major Flute Sonata," 159).
33
" . . . folglich muss man auch dazu die Regeln der Fuge, des doppelten und drey- oder
vierfachen Contrapuncts, und auch wohl des Canons anwenden" (p. 635). By "permutational
structures" I refer to contrapuntal solo episodes that recur in the course of a movement with their
counterpoint inverted, as in the Stimmtausch heard repeatedly in the first movement of the Second
Brandenburg Concerto.
34 The term was popularized in a frequently cited article by Carl Dahlhaus, "Bachs
konzertante Fugen," Bach-Jahrbuch 41 (1955): 45-72.