How Music Developed: A Critical and Explanatory Account of the Growth of Modern MusicHenderson, W. J. (William James)
History
How Music Developed: A Critical and Explanatory Account of the Growth of Modern Music
Henderson, W. J. (William James)
Music -- History and criticism
The reader must bear in mind the important fact that instrumental music,
pure and simple, was still young, and that composers were chiefly
engaged in developing musical beauty. The technics of instrumental
writing were not sufficiently advanced to admit of high emotional
expression. The reader will remember that in the old schools of church
counterpoint the technics of the art were developed by Okeghem, after
which Josquin des Prés showed how to write beautifully, and the masters
of the last period discovered how to make beauty go hand in hand with
expression. So the early writers of the sonata were chiefly engaged in
experimenting with the technics of their new form and the instruments
for which they wrote, and this paved the way for Haydn and Mozart, when
once the former had established the sonata form, to seek for pure
beauty. This they found, and Mozart's works in particular abound with
it. The time was now at hand when the sonata form was to be made the
vehicle for the expression of the most profound human emotion. But
before it could achieve that end, something had to be added to its
technic and its organization. Part of this addition was made by
Clementi.
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) was born before Beethoven and died after him.
His works show that he at first influenced Beethoven but was afterward
influenced by him. Clementi's masculine treatment of the piano, which we
have already noticed, went far toward leading Beethoven away from the
thin style of Haydn and Mozart. There are many passages in Clementi's
early sonatas which are similar in construction to passages afterward
written by Beethoven. Again, Clementi extended and elaborated the
"working out" part, and sometimes introduced into the body of a movement
phrases from its introduction. But the works of Beethoven speedily
superseded those of Clementi, and it is to these we must now turn our
attention. Fortunately they call for only brief discussion, for
Beethoven's sonatas are more remarkable for their content than for their
form.
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