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

Sonate auf Concertenart, p. 33
from precisely the period in which Bach was forming his approach to writing music for
instrumental ensembles--roughly his Weimar years (1708-17). This suggests that his own
heterogeneous approach to form in such works as the Brandenburg Concertos was the result not
of deliberate genre blending but rather of simply following procedures that he had found in models
that were available to him--and, of course, developing them in his own unusually rigorous and
original ways.
In textbook ritornello form, the melodic and rhythmic elements that ordinarily mark each
of these functions are reinforced by scoring. For example, entries of the opening theme or
Vordersatz tend also to be marked by the entry of the ripieno instruments, thus strengthening the
"initiating" function of the first phrase of the ritornello. But in the absence of ripieno parts the
marking of this phrase lacks such reinforcement, hence weakening the formal functioning of the
passage or rendering it ambiguous. Such ambiguity can arise in a so-called Sonate auf
Concertenart if it becomes unclear which of the contrasting themes associated with the upper
parts serves to announce or articulate major structural divisions. The bifurcated scoring of such a
work can complicate the semiotics of the formal design, modifying the articulatory power or
structural functions of the principal thematic ideas. In some works, the result may be the blurring
of distinctions between different thematic ideas over the course of a movement, as "solo" or
episodic phrases become equivalent in articulatory force to statements of the opening theme. Such
is arguably the case in the first movement of Bach's G-minor gamba sonata BWV 1029, and in
some of the Brandenburg Concertos, where, for all the ingenuity of Bach's permutational
counterpoint and the seamless connecting of sections, there is an arbitrariness in the ordering of
thematic passages except at those few points where the opening ritornello phrase is restated by
the melody parts in unison.
The rapid development of this semiotic system during the first two decades of the
eighteenth century, particularly but by no means exclusively in the Venetian concerto, was a
crucial element in the emergence of late-Baroque style. Within Bach's music, its adoption in the
preludes from the English Suites and some of the organ preludes distinguishes these from earlier
compositions in similar genres. The development of the three structural functions underlying
Fischer's Fortspinnungstypus around 1700 was essential for the types of large-scale formal
structures that we take for granted in eighteenth-century music--above all Bach's. These
presuppose the use of modulation--articulated by transposed recurrences of one or more thematic
ideas--as the basis for the formal designs of large movements, not only in concertos, but in
sonatas, suites, fugues, and the like.
Ritornello forms, in which a single recurring thematic passage articulates each new
modulation, are an important example of such a design, but they are far from unique. Their
importance lies in the fact that in them the articulatory power of the recurring theme is
strengthened by the principle of alternation, which might be considered yet another type of
structural function. We are most familiar with this function in the alternation of soloist and full
ensemble in a concerto movement, but the same function is served by the entry of one or more
vocal soloists in an aria, by that of a cantus firmus phrase after an interlude in a chorale fantasia,
or, more generally, by the introduction of new or constrasting material at the beginning of any
distinctly articulated section. The fact that composers shortly after 1700 adopted essentially the
same formal pattern for compositions belonging to distinct genres--aria, chorale, concerto