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

The Sonate auf Concertenart: A Postmodern Invention?
(c) 2005 by David Schulenberg. All rights reserved
Sonate auf Concertenart, p. 1
It has long been evident that certain sonatas, preludes, and other compositions of J. S. Bach and
certain of his contemporaries bear resemblances to music preserved under the title concerto. From
this it has been inferred that at least some of these pieces were written in imitation of actual
concertos. The case was bolstered by the discovery that the eighteenth-century theorist Johann
Adolph Scheibe (1708-76) seems to have identified precisely this sort of sonata as a special type,
thereby confirming modern perceptions of both genres. Accordingly, a number of scholars have
interpreted various works of Bach and his contemporaries not only as concerto parallels but as
more or less conscious efforts to blend genres or generic references.
Without denying the possibility of mixed genres as a device of modern analysis, this essay
examines the historical status and significance of the concerto as a genre for German musicians,
especially Bach, during the first two decades of the eighteenth century. This may seem a peculiar
aim, given the large number of works composed during this period under the title concerto and
the firm place of the concerto in our understanding of eighteenth-century music history. But a
reexamination of the issue, prompted by recent investigations of Scheibe's Sonate auf
Concertenart, suggests new ways of understanding how and why composers such as Bach and
Telemann incorporated elements now associated with the concerto into their own early works. It
also leads to alternate ways of interpreting movements whose designs are now usually understood
as ritornello forms, a type identified almost axiomatically with the concerto in modern writings. I
will argue that during the first decades of the eighteenth century Bach and many of his
contemporaries indeed created instrumental works of diverse formal and generic patterns. But
only gradually did the formal procedures of some of the more prolific writers of such music--Bach
being distinctly not among them--harden into the relatively rigid patterns that were codified by
theorists of the next generation and subsequently enshrined in current views of late-Baroque
musical genres.
The first question, therefore, and the one posed in my title, is whether the Sonate auf
Concertenart was in fact recognized as a distinct genre during Bach's life, particularly at the time
when he is thought to have composed several works that have been identified as examples of this
1
genre. As the term Sonate auf Concertenart has come into scholarly currency, a growing body of
1
The term Sonate auf Concertenart seems to have been first used by Scheibe in the
seventy-fourth installment of his Critischer Musikus, first published Jan. 20, 1740 and reissued in
revised form as part of the work's neue, vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage (Leipzig: Bernhard
Christoph Breitkopf, 1745; facs., Hildesheim: Olms, 1970), 675-83. Relevant extracts from
Scheibe's work are given in the appendix; see extracts 4-7 for his introduction of the term Sonate
auf Concertenart and most substantial discussion thereof. The first to apply Scheibe's term to
specific works of J. S. Bach was apparently Hans Eppstein, Studien über J. S. Bach's Sonaten für
ein Melodieinstrument und obligates Cembalo (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1966), 46. But
Scheibe's concept was first substantially explored only by Michael Marissen, "A Trio in C Major
for Recorder, Violin, and Continuo by J. S. Bach?," Early Music 13 (1985): 384-90. Later studies