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

Sonate auf Concertenart, p. 37
presumably referring to the use in the first movement of distinct themes for the initial entries of
the upper parts. This expression, not Sonate auf Concertenart, is in fact the only one applied in
any eighteenth-century sources to specific pieces of the type of piece to which modern
commentators have applied Scheibe's term. 105
Dialectical oppositions of all sorts are a particularly common feature in the opening
passages of movements from Telemann's instrumental works: not only the now-paradigmatic
dialectic of tutti and solo in concertos, but oppositions between two sonorities (instruments or
instrumental groups), two thematic ideas, or two styles of melodic or rhythmic writing. It would
appear that Telemann throughout his career was fascinated by the possibility of setting up such a
dialectic at the outset of a movement, then working it out through continued simple alternation,
gradual assimilation, or polyphonic combination of two ideas in double counterpoint. A mature
instance of this technique occurs in the Concert no. 5 in B minor (ex. 3). But the technique
employed there is a development of the simpler and more short-winded dialectic employed in the
earlier work shown in example 6. 106
Suggestions for such a dialectical approach to composition might have been found in
polychoral writing (still flourishing in both vocal and instrumental music at the turn of the
century), dialogue passages in opera and cantata, and ballet movements that alternate between
contrasting dance types. Certain types of texts naturally encouraged such devices, as in a number
of movements from Telemann's earlier cantatas, suggesting a possible rhetorical inspiration for
this device. Thus a relatively early work on a text by Erdmann Neumeister opens with a typical
(for Telemann) instrumental antithesis between trumpets and strings, later recast as an antithesis
105
Swack, "On the Origins," 405, interprets the inscription (added by a second hand to the
title in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, ms. 8284/22) as an effort to solve "the problem of genre in the
sonata in the concerted manner." I see rather an allusion to the language of fugue, referring not to
the presence of a "concerted" manner but to that of two contrasting themes or subjects (in place
of a single subject echoed by the second part). A second copy of the same work from the
collection of Sara Levy, bearing an unambiguous attribution to "Sr J[ohann] G[ottlieb] Graun
Sen[ior]," has turned up in the archive of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin (D Bsa SA 3699), which
also contains a copy of W. 8 similarly labeled (SA 3772). Both copies bear the same reference to
"two themes," assigning the second part alternatively to violin or obbligato keyboard.
106
The work illustrated in ex. 6 has a conflicting attribution to the opera composer
Antonio Lotti. Based on what little of the latter's instrumental music is available for comparison,
the style appears to be more typical of Telemann. Comparable examples abound in Telemann's
early instrumental works. For example, the Concerto in F TWV 44:41 for two flauti, two oboes,
two violins, and continuo (preserved in Dl Mus. ms. 2392-O-28) expands the principle of
antiphony from two individual parts to three pairs of like instruments: In the second movement
Vivace the violin pair works in opposition to the two woodwind pairs, having different--more
lively--material.