Critical and Historical Essays: Lectures delivered at Columbia UniversityMacDowell, Edward
History
Critical and Historical Essays: Lectures delivered at Columbia University
MacDowell, Edward
Music -- History and criticism
In considering the development of music, it must always be
remembered that Haydn, Mozart, and their contemporaries knew
little or nothing of Bach's works, thus accounting for what
otherwise would seem a retrograde movement in art. C.P.E. Bach
(born 1714) was much better known than his father; even Mozart
said of him, "He is the father, and we are mere children." He
was renowned as a harpsichord player, and wrote many sonatas
which form the connecting link between the suite and the
sonata. He threw aside the polyphonic style of his father
and strove to give his music new colour and warmth by means
of harmony and modulation. He died in 1788 in Hamburg, where
he was conductor of the opera. It should be mentioned that he
wrote a method of clavichord playing on which, in later days,
Czerny said that Beethoven based his piano teaching.
Up to the period now under consideration, music for the
orchestra occupied a very small part in the composer's work. To
be sure, J.S. Bach wrote some suites, and separate movements
were written in the different dance forms for violins, with
sometimes the addition of a few reed instruments, and possibly
flutes and small horns or trumpets. It is in the works of
C.P.E. Bach, however, that we find the germ of symphonic
orchestral writing that was to be developed by Haydn, Mozart,
and Beethoven. The so-called "symphonies" by Emanuel Bach are
merely rudimentary sonatas written for strings, with flutes,
oboes, bassoons, trumpets, etc., and have practically no
artistic significance except as showing the inevitable trend of
musical thought toward greater power of expression. In Germany
(and indeed everywhere else) the Italian element had full sway
over opera, and non-Italian musicians were forced into writing
for the concert room instead of the stage. Even Beethoven had
many disappointments in connection with his one opera "Fidelio,"
and so strong was the Italian influence, that here in America
we are only just now (1897) recovering from the effects of it.
Franz Joseph Haydn was born near Vienna, in 1732, of humble
parents, his mother a cook in a count's family, and his father
a wheelwright and sexton of the parish church. When a young boy
Haydn had a fine voice, on account of which he was admitted as a
member of the choir at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. This
entitled him to admission to St. Stephen's School, connected
with the cathedral, in which the city paid for the board and
lodging as well as the instruction of the singers. When the
boys' voices changed or "broke," however, they were turned
adrift. On leaving the cathedral, Haydn suffered the direst
poverty, engaging himself at one time as valet to the Italian
singing teacher, Porpora, in order to secure some lessons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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