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

Sonate auf Concertenart, p. 39
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between voices and instruments (ex. 7). In seventeenth-century examples, these familiar devices
are usually not yet coordinated with a large-scale tonal scheme. Telemann may have been one of
the first to incorporate such thinking consistently into the opening passages of movements of
trios, quartets, and other familiar eighteenth-century instrumental genres. J. S. Bach rarely
employs the sort of local contrast at the beginning of a movement that might threaten
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discontinuity or incoherence. But Telemann's approach evidently found imitators in such
younger contemporaries as C. P. E. Bach (who was Telemann's godson).
Bach's use of alternative schemes
If Bach's contemporaries were busy exploring the possibilities of all sorts of "duologuing" designs
in both instrumental and vocal music at precisely the time when he began composing, shortly after
1700, what we call the Vivaldian concerto was just one manifestation of the process. My second
suggestion, then, is that we seek to understand more clearly how Bach learned the principles
involved and how their application in his music differs from the same in that of his
contemporaries. For instance, a number of early keyboard movements have rondo-like designs
whose modulating scheme is articulated by a returning thematic idea; among these are the
one-movement sonata in A minor BWV 967 and several movements from the manualiter
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toccatas. Fugal works sometimes take similar forms, notably the Capriccio in E (BWV 993) and
several others in which a lengthy subject alternates with long episodes composed of virtuoso
passagework.
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It is easy to understand such works by analogy to the solo concerto. But by explaining
107 For another example, see the opening chorus of Der Gottlose ist wie ein Wetter, TWV
1:251 (in Dl Ms. ms. 2392-E-576), whose textual antithesis is reflected in the alternation between
an opening homophonic section (with adagio interpolations) and a fugato on the words aber der
Gottseliger.
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Exceptions occur in vocal works whose text suggests it, as in the vivid bass solo
movement "Wenn einstens die Posaunen schallen" of Cantata 127 that alternates between arioso
and aria style to depict the Apocalypse.
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In a lost manuscript copy of the G-major toccata BWV 916, Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber,
a student of Bach, called it Concerto seu Toccata pour le Clavecin. But it is impossible to know
whether the first word of his title referred to the quasi-ritornello design of the first movement, the
three-movement form of the piece as a whole (unique among the manualiter toccatas), or the
general character of the figuration in the first movement, which makes constant use of several
motives reminiscent of the Venetian violin concerto.
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Rondo form and fugue occur in early concertos, both, for example, occurring in
different movements of the Telemann double concerto copied by J. S. Bach (TWV 52:G2). There
the first quick movement is a fugue in six real parts; fugue comprises the whole of the movement
and not merely the ritornellos (as in the last movement of Bach's A-minor violin concerto, BWV
1041).