In Germany Georg and Gottlieb Muffat stand nearly alone with Kuhnau in the progress of harpsichord music between Froberger and Sebastian Bach. Georg Muffat spent six years in Paris and came under French influence as Froberger had come, but his chief keyboard works (_Apparatus Musico Organisticus_ (1690)) are twelve toccatas more suited to organ than to harpsichord. In 1727 his son Gottlieb had printed in Vienna _Componimenti musicali per il cembalo_, which show distinctly the French influence. Kuhnau looms up large chiefly on account of his sonatas, which are in form and extent the biggest works yet attempted for clavier. By these he pointed toward a great expansion of the art; but as a matter of fact little came of it. In France, Italy, and Germany the small forms were destined to remain the most popular in harpsichord music; and the sonatas and concertos of Bach are immediately influenced by study of the Italian masters, Corelli and Vivaldi. In Italy, the birthplace of organ music and so of a part of harpsichord music, interest in keyboard music of any kind declined after the death of Frescobaldi in 1644, and was replaced by interest in opera and in music for the violin. Only one name stands out in the second half of the century, Bernardo Pasquini, of whose work, unhappily, little remains. He was famous over the world as an organist, and the epitaph on his tombstone gives him the proud title of organist to the Senate and People of Rome. Also he was a skillful performer on the harpsichord; but he is more nearly allied to the old polyphonic school than to the new. A number of works for one and for two harpsichords are preserved in manuscript in the British Museum, and these are named sonatas. Some are actually suites, but those for two harpsichords have little trace of dance music or form and may be considered as much sonatas as those works which Kuhnau published under the same title. All of Kuhnau’s sonatas appeared before 1700 and the date on the manuscript in the British Museum is 1704. Pasquini was then an old man, and it is very probable that these sonatas were written some years earlier; in which case he and not Kuhnau may claim the distinction of first having written music for the harpsichord on the larger plan of the violin concerto and the sonatas of Corelli.[10]