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

Sonate auf Concertenart, p. 19
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the use of what Steven Zohn describes as "gestures associated with the concerto." Among the
latter are homophonic or unison textures, a filler viola part, instrumental recitative, "aria-like slow
movements," and a type of binary-form final movement characterized by athletic passagework,
often with imitation or voice-exchange between the upper parts. Each of these deserves
consideration, bearing in mind that earlier musicians did not necessarily share modern perceptions
of the "markers" that characterized instrumental concertos or concerto style.
The most important of these has certainly been ritornello form. What, in fact, is meant by
"ritornello form" (or "Vivaldian" ritornello form) in modern writings? Minimally, it appears to be
almost any material heard at the outset of a piece and repeated later, such as the brief opening
phrase played by the tutti at the outset of Vivaldi's G-minor concerto for flute, oboe, violin,
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bassoon, and continuo, RV 107. Russell Stinson even speaks of the one-measure fugal subject of
the organ chorale Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend, BWV 655 as "a ritornello," and Jean-
Claude Zehnder has described equally short passages as Kurz-Ritornellen in instrumental works
by Torelli and others that Bach might have encountered during the first decade of the eighteenth
century. 57
The word ritornello (or its cognates) appears frequently in performing materials from the
first two decades of the century, but often attached to instrumental refrains in vocal movements
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whose style and form recall the old strophic aria. These ritornellos rarely modulate and rarely
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Zohn, "The Ensemble Sonatas," 491-2. At issue is whether ritornello form,
"stereotypical orchestral gestures," and other markers indeed constitute "generic reference to the
concerto allegro," as Zohn suggests in "The Sonate auf Concertenart and Conceptions of Genre."
56
Cited by Swack, "On the Origins,"375. Very brief ritornellos can be found in early
eighteenth-century arias, e.g., the three-measure ritornello of the soprano aria "Ich traue Gott"
inTelemann's Gelobet sey der Herr, TWV 1:596 of 1719 (examined in the copy from the Grimma
collection in Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek [Dl], Mus. ms. 2392-E-591). But these are
somewhat unusual, and passages actually labeled as ritornellos (see below) are usually somewhat
longer.
57
Russell Stinson, J. S. Bach's Great Eighteen Organ Chorales (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 21; Jean-Claude Zehnder, "Giuseppe Torelli und Johann Sebastian Bach:
Zu Bachs Weimarer Konzertform," Bach-Jahrbuch 77 (1991): 35. The first section of BWV 655
(mm. 1-51), which both writers describe in terms of a concerto, could be viewed with equal
justice as an invention or sinfonia.
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As in the "Ritournello" that precedes the soprano solo "Ein Mensch" in Telemann's early
Trauer-Actus TWV 1:38, Ach wie nichtig (seen in the sole source, Dl Mus. ms. 2392-E-551).
Although unrelated to the soprano solo except by key and meter, the passage is apparently to be
repeated afterwards. Heinichen's early German cantatas incorporate similar forms, as in Es
naheten aber zu Jesu (preserved in Dl Mus. ms. 2398-E-502), in which da-capo (or quasi dacapo)
arias for tenor and bass stand alongside strophic lieder for soprano and alto. In the
autograph score of Cantata 68, Bach placed the word Ritornello, apparently in the older sense of