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dissertation entitled

"SENSIBILITY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AS SEEN
IN THE FANTASIAS FROM THE FUR KENNER UND
LIEBHABER 0F CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH”

presented by

Doris Tishkoff

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. Arts 5 Letters Interdisci-

degree in .
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Date January 12, I983

 

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’ CKL

SENSIBILITY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AS SEEN IN
THE FANTASIAS FROM THE FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER OF
CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH

BY

Doris Tishkoff

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

College of Arts and Letters, Interdisciplinary

1983

(aid

5/30.?

ABSTRACT

SENSIBILITY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AS SEEN IN
THE FANTASIAS FROM THE FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER OF
CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH

BY

Doris Tishkoff

The object of this study is to add to our understanding of
eighteenth—century sensibility using the late Fantasias from
C. P. E. Bach's FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER as source material.
It aims to show that the musical principle of Bach's Fantasias
is the equivalent of a commonly held belief in.the confluence
of reason and emotion by important figures of the Enlighten-
ment. In the marked sectionalism and dramatic contrasts of
Bach's Fantasias, we find a reflection of the latter's belief
in the passions, that feeling and reason must work in concert in
order to activate the higher levels of morality and knowledge.

There are three major sections. In the first, I have ex-
amined selected writings of the major philosophes showing how
each one subscribed in his own way to a theory of the passions.
My purpose has been to illuminate the special dialectic of the
Enlightenment in which reason and emotion were complementary
and interconnected.

Section two traces the transition of French thought into

Germany showing common aesthetic notions held by French

writers and German figures close to C. P. E. Bach. I have
also focused on Diderot's musical aesthetic theory and the
manner in which it correlates with Bach's own. The~connec-
tion between theory and music is made, showing that Bach
utilizes the subtle interplay of reason and emotion, freedom
and form, in his music.

Section three uses precise analysis of Bach's Eb Major
Fantasia in order to isolate the mechanics of this stylistic,
innovative and musical aesthetic. Next, I have looked at the
collection as a whole, showing that it is informed throughout
with the musical principle, even in the sonatas and rondos.
This overview also shows that Bach amended the more radical
nature of his principle at the end of his life, moving stylis-
tically toward the formal balance and simplicity of the clas-
sical style.

The study suggests that:

l. C. P. E. Bach's important technical and aesthetic in-
novations paved the way for music as a vehicle for deep per-
sonal expression and the articulation of the nonverbal ideas
in which reason and emotion are melded.

2. Bach's music remains an important model for both musi-
cians and nonmusicians today in respect to its remarkable in-
tegration of creative ingenuity and interpretive freedom with

the formal and theoretical aspects of music.

PREFACE

In this study of the Fantasias of C. P. E. Bach, I have
endeavored to isolate and define a musical principle that
corresponds to the theory of the passions central to eight-
eenth century Sensibility. My purpose in the musical anal—
ysis has been to show the innovative techniques that Bach
developed for a style of freedom, spontaneity, and dramatic
contrast that reflect the ebb and flow of human passions.
Using Bach's musical scores as my primary source material,

I have considered them from the vantage point of the cross-
currents between literature, drama, aesthetics and music as
seen in the writings of major Enlightenment figures. My
approach has been interdisciplinary throughout.

My aim has been to avoid the drawbacks of either an his—
torical approach that treats the music tangentially, or an
analytical approach that interprets the music in too narrow
a scope. Dissolving the barriers of specialization has been
difficult and costly in time and morale--in early stages,
the problems of undertaking such a diverse project were for-
midable. These obstacles seemed, for a time, almost unsu-
perable until I was fortunate enough to attend the three week
meeting of the Aston Magna Academy in Great Barrington, Mas-

sachusetts for its 1982 session. It was here, in the

ii

spirit of mutual inquiry, shared ideas, and recognition that
we can only understand a musical period via the historical
and cultural age that spawned it, that the individual
threads of my study begin to come together. I am deeply
grateful to all of my colleagues at Aston Magna who have
made the completion of this work possible.

I also owe an obligation to Philip Barford, whose inte-
grative writings on the cultural and philosophical influ-
ences on Bach's music in his book THE KEYBOARD MUSIC OF
C. P. E. BACH helped me to consider Bach's musical aesthetic
in my own research. Although I have not always agreed with
Barford, his writings have been a valuable support in terms
of the larger aesthetic issues.

For scores, I have used the Kalmus edition of FUR KENNER
UND LIEBHABER, entitled SONATAS, FANTASIAS AND RONDOS FOR
PIANO SOLO, in two volumes. Although the University of
Michigan was kind enough to allow me access to original edi-
tions housed in their rare manuscript collection, they were
not available for intensive analysis. The Kalmus edition,
however, is an authentic facsimile of the originals. The
scores are easy to work with for their clarity, none of
Bach's original notations have been changed, and the head-
ings remain in the original German as he wrote them.

There are numerous individuals to whom I am indebted for
their contributions to and assistance in this study. With-
out the support of Dr. Kenneth Light, Past President of

Oregon Institute of Technology, and its General Studies

iii

Department, my residency at Aston Magna would have been im-
possible. Margaret Fabrizio of Stanford University, and
Alan Curtis of the University of California at Berkeley
have been enormously helpful in sharing their perceptions
on Bach's Fantasias from the performer's point of view--
perhaps the only valid viewpoint in the long run. One must
experience these pieces in performance in order to know
them. To Professor James Niblock of the Music Department
at Michigan State University, I owe a tremendous debt of
gratitude for his unfailing encouragement, and his flexi—
bility in his acceptance of my musical analysis. In par-
ticular, Dr. Niblock has permitted me the luxury of bring-
ing imagination and creative insights to a task that could
easily succumb to the mechanics of analysis. Professor
John F. A. Taylor of Michigan State University's PhilOSOphy
Department has been a mentor and an inspiration as one who
exhibits the most profound commitment to the principles of
philosophy and aesthetics in every aspect of his life
throughout my tenure at Michigan State. Professor Josef
Konvitz of the History Department at Michigan State, and
Chairman of the committee deserves special thanks for toler-
ating my inclination to stray during meanderings through the
vast amount of material in a study that combines the three
disciplines of music, history, and philosophy. The final
focus of this work is certainly a result of his direction.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge all of the colleagues,

musicians, and dear friends, whose names would be too

iv
numerous to mention here. In particular, I owe a special debt
to my typist, Elaine Ybarra, who has been my partner in every
respect in the final stages of this work, and my sons, Dan
and Will, who proofread and collated. To those who are not

mentioned by name, I am grateful for having shared the great

wonder and beauty that art and music bring to one's life.

I

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
INTRODUCTION 0....I...0.0.0.....‘OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 1
Chapter
. ONE 'SENSIBILITY IN THE AGE OF REASON: THE DUAL
NATURE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT ................. 9

THREE

FOUR

An examination of the writings of Voltaire,
Rousseau and Diderot showing their relation
to C. P. E. Bach.

THE MUSICAL PRINCIPLE, SONG WITHOUT WORDS ... 49
The transition into Germany of French ideas

about sensibility. Bach incorporates its
aesthetic into his musical principle.
THE Eb DIAJOR FANTASIA O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 86

Analysis of this Fantasia from the 1783
edition of EUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER.

THE MUSICAL PRINCIPLE IN EXTENSION .......... 113

An overview of FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER.

EPILOGUE ...........r..;.......L..........;il;.r..... 153

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................ 175

INTRODUCTION

Recent studies of the eighteenth century have shown that
the Age of Reason may be a misnomer, since it detracts from
the totality of an age in which feelings and emotions were
by no means ignored. It is the aim of this study to add to
this revised understanding of the eighteenth century through
a study of the Fantasias of C. P. E. Bach from his FUR KEN-
NER UND LIEBHABER, showing the manner in which they corres-
pond to other significant writings and works of eighteenth-
century Sensibility.

The study is organized into three major segments, the
first dealing with major writers of the century, all of whom
embraced a common belief that the passions were equally as
important as the rational faculty. Surveying these writings,
we find that the great thinkers of the Enlightenment were
profoundly aware of the irrational, the subconscious, the
emotional side of man. I have examined a broad spectrum of
writings emphasizing the passions as vital and necessary to
the balanced psychological being, to right action, and in
achieving the higher reaches of understanding and knowledge.
In particular, we find that it is only through this broader
look at the Enlightenment that we perceive its essential dia-

lectic, the complementary nature of reason and emotion.

1

The Enlightenment, despite its preoccupation with order,
logic, and science, also knew that the heart of man's u-
niqueness, his spirit, his aesthetic being, lay in his
feelings and emotions. Those who work in this area of
eighteenth-century studies have shown us that writers, art-
ists, and essayists explored the realm of sentiment and e-
motion in the totality of human behavior and psychology.

So pervasive was their belief that in the final analysis,
feelings and emotions play the most vital role in learning
and morality that this current of ideas has been called the
_ Cult of Sensibility, occupying an equally important posi-
tion in the ideological life of the second half of the cen-
tury as the Cult of Rationality.

In the chapter on Sensibility, I have focused on the
writings of the famous triumvirate, Diderot, Voltaire, and
Rousseau, for a number of reasons. Firstly, their writings
and their influence were so pervasive that they dominated
and shaped Enlightenment thinking. Secondly, we find in
their writings the special dichotomy that reflects precise-
ly the phenomenon to be found in Bach's Fantasias: an al-
legiance to both reason and emotion, love of both freedom
and discipline, and an insistent need to express the sub-
jective and unruly self without abandoning the rules of
classical form altogether. Thirdly, these writers had a
seminal effect upon German thinking of the period. Rous-
seau was idolized in Germany, acting as a catalyst for

the preromantic sturm and drang, admired by Kant, the

 

greatest apostle of Reason in the century. Although we
have no specific evidence of direct communication between
Bach and Voltaire, they were in residence at the Court of
Frederick the Great contemporaneously. Considering the ad-
ulation that Frederick paid the philosophe, one must assume
that Bach and his intellectual circle were, at the least,
familiar with his thinking. Diderot, of the three, was the
most important in terms of a direct influence on Bach's
aesthetic because of his relationship to Lessing, Bach's
closest associate. The two, in fact, were major architects
of the bourgeois drama, and an emerging theory of naturalism
in the arts.

Lastly, the position of Diderot and Lessing as writer,
dramatist, essayist, and theorist argues for the interdis-
ciplinary orientation of this study. My apologia for the
interrelationship between history, philosophy, literature,
music and aesthetics lies in the first chapter. None of the
writers just mentioned were formal aestheticians, yet all of
them contributed significantly to the emergence of a new
aesthetic in the eighteenth century. Each, in his own way,
turned against the contrived artificiality of the older
style. Each addressed himself to problems involved in cre-
ating new forms that would suit the needs of a changing
class structure, the demand for freedom, naturalism, psy-
chological honesty, and above all, subjective expression in
art and music. This commonality is stressed in the first

chapter so that we can understand the external influences

on Bach's innovations for the very same aesthetic goals.

The second section of the study is a transition between
history of ideas and the musical problem. It is here that
I have worked toward the kind of integration and synthesis
of my material which informs the study throughout. Because
of the trend in modern scholarship toward specialization,
as well as the technical difficulties for an investigator
trained in humanistic studies working with musical scores
as source material, the music of Sensibility has, for the
most part, remained within the bailiwick of professional
musicologists. In the chapter on THE MUSICAL PRINCIPLE,
SONG WITHOUT WORDS, I have tried to correct the divisive
effects of a split between music history and musicology.
Anatol Dorati pinpointed that problem in his foreword to
the publication of papers given at the International Bee-
thoven Conference in Detroit, Michigan in 1977, when he wrote

Our age is one of specialization and specialists.

This fact, while it produces an extraordinary de-

velopment of various skills and crafts, is also a

source of alienation. Only too frequently we do

not manage to fathom the whole while we are sub-

merged in one or another part of it; looking at

the trees, we do not see the forest. This is true,

one can regretfully say, for every facet of our

lives. Thus also in the art of music. Its creative,

performing, and theoretical aspects have moved in

divergent directions, insofar as its active partici-

pants are concerned, while the public--once also

an active participant--has become increasingly pas-

sive and perhaps increasingly bewildered.l
In bringing performing musicians and musicologists together,
Mr. Dorati said he hoped to shed "light upon the interrela-

tionships of all musical aspects, and of music to sociology,

history, aesthetics, and more."2

The second section considers the manner in which the
milieu of C. P. E. Bach acted as a stimulus to his musical
innovations, leading to an expression of the theory‘of the
passions in his music. I have examined the writings of
Bach himself and contemporary critics who perceived the re-
lationship between music and literature,recognizing that
Bach's music was a reflection of the kind of dramatic de-
livery one would find in the theatre, as well as the ebb and
flow of passions. This chapter identifies the special dia-
lectic to be found in Bach's musical principle. For him,
music suggests deeper meanings, ideas that cannot be artic-
ulated in words alone, because it mobilizes and expresses
powerful emotions. In this way we begin to see that the
musical principle of C. P. B. Each is another manifestation
of the complementary nature of reason and emotion already
alluded to in the first chapter.

Section three of the study deals with the musical scores
exclusively. In my musical analyses, I have isolated and
described the specific techniques that Bach pioneered for
dramatic expression and contrast. Chapter Three contains
a thorough and precise analysis of the Eb Major Fantasia
of the 1783 edition in which these techniques are identified
and the sharp juxtaposition of mood and style is described.
Chapter Four looks over the entire collection as a whole,
identifying Bach's usage of the principle of dramatic con-
trast not only in the other Fantasias, but also in other

forms—-sonata and rondo. In this way, we see that the

musical principle pervades FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER
throughout.

Some difficulties in approaching this problem have been
the enormous amount of material which must be integrated,
and the problem of an historian working with musical scores,
which demand technical skills for analysis. In my own sur—
vey of the material on C. P. E. Bach, the shortcoming in
most of the existing publications lies in their emphasis on
the one or the other. Those who approach the problem from
a more technical viewpoint, tend to be inaccurate in the
brOader historical and cultural aspects of their work. One
such study would be the work done by Paz Corazon G. Canave,
M. M., actually a publication of her dissertation on A RE-
EVALUATION OF THE ROLE PLAYED BY C. P. E. EACH IN THE DEVEL-
OPMENT OF THE CLAVIER SONATA. Although her contribution to
the proper role of Bach in the development of sonata-form is
significant, her work is marred by her misunderstanding of
historical and biographical aspects of Bach's life and work.
On the other hand, Philip Barford brings a substantial un-
derstanding of the intellectual and philosophical background
of Bach's works to his overview of his keyboard music. Yet
Barford tries to cover a great deal of ground in a single
volume. Although he has certainly placed Bach's Fantasias
within their proper perspective, in terms of his contribu-
tion to stylistic change and the emerging aesthetic of late
eighteenth century music, his musical analyses are not de-

finitive. Barford gives us a rather sketchy analysis of the

Eb Major Fantasia, which I have used as the central work
for my analytic approach to Bach's musical aesthetic. Com-
parison of our respective conclusions will show that‘my a-
nalysis offers a thorough approach in which all of the var-
ious facets of Bach's style are examined and identified in
order to make my conclusions about the real nature of his
musical aesthetic.

Some side effects of this study have been some new
thoughts upon the complex interrelationship between culture
and the artist, and the relationship between C. P. E. Bach
and his father. My findings on the manner in which Bach's

empfindsamkeit retains certain vestiges of the style and

 

genius of his father should help to reassess Bach's attitude
toward the latter and the academic style of baroque music.
This has to do with Bach's relationship to his past. In my
Epilogue, I have also addressed myself to Bach's influence
on Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, all of whom were alive dur-
ing his lifetime. (He died three years before Mozart, and
may have seen the young Beethoven conducting.) In this way,
this study should help us to evaluate Bach's pivotal place
in intellectual and musical history with more accuracy.

Most of all, this author hopes that an interdisciplinary
study of C. P. E. Bach's Fantasias will be received in the
spirit which the composer intended his music to be taken.
For him, music was the ultimate resolution between disci-
pline and technical facility, the equivalent of factual

knowledge, spontaneous creation, and individual genius, the

equivalent of a creative and intuitive interpretation of
facts. Bach's hatred of music that was brilliant in tech-
nique, but devoid of feeling and personal interpretation
remains a lesson to us all today. Not only must musicians
follow his admonition to "play from the soul," and make of
music an art, but non-musicians of whatever discipline would
do well to keep Bach's musical principle in mind. In light
of the fragmentary, mechanistic, and suprarational tenden-
cies of today's specialized, computerized, and competitive
world, we need to remind ourselves of the special confluence
of reason and emotion, freedom and discipline, technical ex-
pertise and intuition to be found in the Fantasias of C. P.

E. Bach.

CHAPTER ONE

Sensibility in the Age of Reason:
The Dual Nature of the Enlightenment

But heart can never awaken a spark in heart
Unless your own heart keep in touch.

Goethe, FAUSTl

Until recently, writers on the eighteenth century have
used two terms interchangeably, Enlightenment and the Age of
Reason, to describe an historical period intoxicated by dis-
coveries in physics, astronomy, mathematics, and biology.
These terms were not the invention of scholars, but of the
men of the age themselves, those who lived, breathed, and
shaped its spirit. Voltaire used one to describe the seven-
teenth century in his work THE AGE OF LOUIS THE XIV.

This work is not intended to be just a life of
Louis XIV; it has a more important purpose. Its aim
is not merely to describe the actions of a single
man, but to provide posterity with an account of the
achievements of the human spirit in the most en-
lightened age there has ever been.2

More effusively, D'Alembert has given us the sense of eu-

phoria and optimism that characterized the attitude toward

reason when he wrote that

the discovery and application of a new method of
philosophizing, the kind of enthusiasm which accom-
panies discoveries, a certain exaltation of ideas
which the spectacle of the universe produces in us
--all these causes have brought about a lively fer-
mentation of minds. Spreading through nature in

all directions like a river which has burst its dams,
this fermentation has swept with a sort of violence
everything along with it which stood in its way . . .
Thus, from the principles of the secular sciences to
the foundations of religious revelation, from

9

10

metaphysics to matters of taste, from music to morals,

from the scholastic disputes of theologians to mat-

ters of trade, from the laws of princes to those of

peoples, from natural law to the arbitrary laws of

nations . . . everything has been discussed and in

analyzed, or at least mentioned. The fruit or se-

quel of this general effervescence of minds has been

to cast new light on some matters and new shadows

on others, just as the effect of the ebb and flow

of the tides is to leave some things on the shore

and to wash others away.3

As the intellectual spokesmen for their age, the philo-
sophes found understanding and reason to be powerful weapons
for mounting the barricades against superstition, ignorance,
privilege, and autocracy, forces that had kept the great
masses of Europe in squalor and misery in the past. John
Locke gave the keynote when he suggested that once they
would allow "all the light we can upon our own minds, all
the acquaintance we can make with our understanding . . ."4
there would be a dawning of a better world. There were
great hopes for the future of a society that, with the spread
of literacy and public education, would produce active par-
ticipants in the political decisions that determine its des-
tiny. Then, as today, the conviction that educated men would
behave in a reasonable and socially productive fashion gave
rise to optimistic projections about the future of society.
The epitaph, an Age of Reason, was as much an ideal as it was
a reality.

This "dream of reason"5 was reinforced by a powerful rhe-
toric, that must be seen as precisely that. Captivated by

the enthusiasm and style of such writers as D'Alembert and

Voltaire, we are all too easily led astray as to the true

11

character of their century. In nomenclature alone, we are
deceived, since we need only look at other writings of these

philosophes to perceive a powerful duality, the truerstance

 

of the intellectual construction of the age. Despite their
trust and faith in reason, these writers also recognized the
importance and validity of feelings, emotions, intuitive
thinking that complement and moderate the rational faculty.

On close examination, we find that the notion of reason
and the infallibility of a methodology resting upon scientif-
ic observation and mathematical precision might more proper-
ly be assigned to the preceding century. The seventeenth
century, so prolific in scientific discovery and invention,
provided the substance upon which the Enlightenment built its
mechanistic ideas and dispersed its utilitarian physics and
mechanics. We must be careful to distinguish these earlier
conceptions of knowledge and understanding from those of the
Enlightenment.

Descartes, who stands out as a pillar of seventeenth-cen-
tury thought as well as the inspiration for much of the En-
lightenment world view, declared that he would

spend my whole life in cultivating my reason, and to

advance as far as I could in the knowledge of truth,

following the method I had laid down for myself . . .

the sole object of my whole plan was to acquire cer-

tainty, to clear away the shifting soil and sand in

order to find the rock or clay beneath it.6

One must interpret the Cartesian position in terms of his-

torical place and time. Living in an age that clung to be-

liefs in certain absolutes, whether religious or philosophical,

12

Descartes' method seeks to eliminate, to whatever extent pos-
sible, those uncertainties and false illusions that muddy and
obscure clear reasoning and truth. Reflected in an.embryonic
period in terms of the scientific and empirical view of the
modern world, Descartes' method mirrors his anxiety to es-

tablish order, reliability, and maximum certainty.

That is why we will perhaps not be reasoning badly

if we conclude that physics, astronomy, medicine,

and all the other sciences which follow from the con-
sideration of composite entities are very dubious
[and uncertain]; whereas arithemetic, geometry, and
the other sciences of this nature, which treat only
of very simple and general things without concerning
themselves as to whether they occur in nature or not,
contain some element of certainty and sureness. For
whether I am awake or whether I am asleep, two and
three together will always make the number five, and
the square will never have more than four sides; and
it does not seem possible that truths ['so clear and']
so apparent can ever be suspected of any falsity [or
uncertainty].7

Despite its centrality to the ethos of the Enlightenment,
the Cartesian view was too restrictive for the eighteenth

century philosophes, whose thinking has a striking ring of

 

modernity. Their skepticism in the matter of the infal-
libility of method and reason distingushes them from the
previous century. Despite their enthusiasm for mathematics
and science, they were less formal in their methodology, more
worldly, and more diverse in their creative output. In par-
ticular, we find the Cartesian assumption about the possibil-
ity of approximating absolutes in knowledge and truth to be
replaced by a more modern notion of relativity. Diderot, in
the great polemic between mgi and lg; in RAMEAU'S NEPHEW,

writes that "You'd be surprised how little I think of methods

13

and rules. The man who needs a textbook can't go far."8

Through his antagonist, the Nephew, Diderot argues for limi-

0— .

tations on method and knowledge.

["Oh you master crackpot!" I broke out. How does
it come about that in your silly head some very sound
ideas are all muddled up with extravagant ones?"]

HE. Who the devil can tell? Chance sows them there
and there they grow; which would tend to show that un-
til one knows everything one knows nothing worth know-
ing, ignorant of the origin of this, the purpose of
that and the place of either. Which should come first?
Can one teach without method? And where does method
spring from? I tell you, PhiIOSOpher mine, I have an
idea physics will always be a puny science, a drop of
water picked up from the great ocean on the point of
a needle, a grain of dust from the Alps. Take the
causes of phenomena--what about them? Really, it
would be as well to know nothing as to know so little
and so poorly.9

Nonetheless, Diderot and his fellow philosophes pursued

 

truths of nature that 1mm“: be, by their very definition,
obscure, elusive and ever changing. As writers of fiction,
poets, playwrights, even musicians, they were concerned with
a question that is fundamental to art as well as philosophy
--the question of the nature of man. Then, as now, they un-
derstood that the web of human feelings, the propensity for
good and evil, selfishness and self-sacrifice, wisdom and ig-
norance, order and chaos were part and parcel of the human con—
dition. Not only did they recognize these contradictions and
complexities in their fellow men, but in themselves as well.
In their writings on fiction, drama, sociology, politics,
aesthetics, and religion, we find a lively curiosity coupled
with a profound recognition of the great uncharted sea that

lies beneath man's conscious mind and overt behavior. As

14

one delves into the larger scope of Enlightenment writings,
especially the lesser known works, one is struck by a con-
stantly reiterated theme--that is, the passions are surely
equally as important as reason in the total scheme of human
thought and behavior. Inevitably, one must conclude that a
notion of the confluence of reason and emotion most accurate-
ly describes the intellectual construction of the Enlighten-
ment.

Since our primary concern in this study will be with one
facet of the eighteenth century synthesis of thought and

feeling, the empfindsamkeit of C. P. E. Bach, it would be

 

beyond the scope of this paper to explore this phenomenon in
its breadth. Our purpose here is to first define sensibility,
showing the dynamic of reason and emotion, and, second, to
show how these ideas influenced the thought and the musical
aesthetic of C. P. E. Bach. Our interest is in the cross-
currents between literature, drama, and aesthetics as each
category articulated notions about sensibility that appear in
the music of Bach as well, helping us understand the radical
innovations and stylistic developments of the late Fantasias.
For this, I have focused on those figures and writings that
most clearly reflect the allegiance to the passions, the in-
terrelationship between thought and feeling, form and freedom,
method and creative invention that we find in Bach's Fantasias.
Our problem here is a feast of riches, since recent schol-
arship has shown that the notion of sensibility as an adjunct

to reason was pervasive throughout the century and throughout

15

the writings of virtually every major Enlightenment figure.

Beginning with the philosophes themselves, we find the most

 

eager apostles of reason subscribing to a corresponding re-
spect for feelings and emotions, even a suspicion about
overdoses of arid rationality. D'Alembert, whose exuberant
rhetoric on reason opened this chapter, also warned against

too much "cold, didactic discussions";0

in the realms of
literature and art that deal with complex human emotions not
easily perceived under a micrOscope. In fact, we need go

no further than Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, figures who
dominated the century, for ample evidence of their subscrip-
tion to the notions about sensibility. Despite the unique-
ness of each and their individual styles, we find a striking
congruity in their thinking as each one assigns to the pas-
sions a role equal to that of reason in the total scheme of
man's thought and action.

Looking first at Voltaire, we find him to be bitterly
scornful of the effects of ignorance and superstition, level-
ing his 'acerbic pen at those institutions that he found to
be the enemies of reason and social justice. Yet his hatred
of ignorance never obscured those deeper sensibilities which
the writer-poet carefully nurtured. Despite the cynicism of
his best known work, CANDIDE, Voltaire was the author of
numerous poems and plays dealing with love_in the most roman-
tic and tender fashion. His portrayal of tragic heroines who
succumbed to the excesses of passion was the source of much

11

of his fame as a dramatist. Most of all, we know him to be

16

frankly sentimental, given to outbursts of copious tears as
at the occasion of his coronation at the Comedie Francaise
where he wept, as one observer put it, "immoderatelyo."12
Voltaire's position in respect to the complementary nature
of reason and feeling is equally revealing. Personally, his
deepest passions seemed to emanate from his hatred of fanat-
icism and those traditional institutions that fed it, especi-
ally the Catholic Church, and French absolutism. His writings
were a brilliant satire of reactionary elements in his soci-
ety and one would expect to find in Voltaire an unequivocal
champion of reason. Yet in CANDIDE he attacked the philosoph-
ical optimism of the age, and in his DISCOURSE ON MAN, the
neo-stoics of his day. For him, these were the worst fanatics.
Their doctrines would have their followers engage in dangerous
and unhealthy suppression of the passions. He wrote to Pas-
cal that "He who destroys his passions instead of being ruled

13 Like his mistress and

by them wants to become an angel."
colleague, Mme. Du Chatelet, he regarded the passions as a
gift from God, a protection against indifference and apathy,
and the surest stimulus to the great and sublime in one's
actions.

Voltaire knew that a naive faith in reason, science, or
philosophy as answers to mankind's ageless problems could be
as destructive as any other form of fanaticism. As we know
from CANDIDE, his final advice was to find in one's work the
best remedy for the "three great ills of mankind, poverty,

14

vice, and boredom," and his small band of aspiring

l7

philosophers wound up, as he did, "cultivating their garden."15
Moreover, Voltaire shared the basic premise of sensibility
that when art or literature mobilizes and releases the pas-
sions, it evokes a certain uneasiness, the equivalent of suf-
fering that sensitizes selfish man to the needs of others.
Like so many others of the age, he found that the intellectual,
the emotional, and the moral faculties work in concert with
one another.

Although Voltaire is best known for his satires, his his-
tories, his powerful dramatizations of the Calas case, he
was also the author of many lesser-known poems, operas, bal-
lets, and plays in which the man of sensibility is more clear-
ly manifested. Perhaps the best statement of his position on
the feelings is to be found in ZADIG, a thinly disguised po-
lemic against the irrationality and hypocrisies of his age
and mankind in general, recalling CANDIDE. Zadig, its peripa-
tetic hero, wanders through a series of blunders, good and bad
fortune, and romances. Toward the end of his journey, he
meets a hermit, old, and whitebearded, who speaks on all the
great issues of life with "an eloquence so live and touching
that Zadig felt drawn to him by an invincible charm."16 In
the course of his conversation with this wise man, "They
spoke of the passions. 'Ah, how harmful they are!‘ said
Zadig."l7 In answer, the hermit replies to the contrary

"They are the winds that fill the sails of the ves-
sel . . . They sometimes submerge it, but without
them it could not sail. Bile makes us angry and ill,

but without bile man could not live. All is dangerous
here below, and all is necessary."

18

They spoke of pleasure, and the hermit proved that
it is a present from the Divinity. "For . . . man can
give himself neither sensations nor ideas, he receives
everything; pain and pleasure come to him from else-
where." ”

Voltaire's respect for reason and sentiment was perhaps
best summarized by an inscription on a bust honoring the el-

derly philosophe as "the greatest genius, the most sensitive

 

heart,"19 a dual personality he gladly espoused.

Coming to Rousseau, we find one whose sensibilities quali-
fy his thought and writing more so than any other Enlighten-
ment figure. In his CONFESSIONS, one of the earliest modern
autobiographies, Rousseau reveals the emotional and incon-
stant character that was well known, most of all, to himself.
In explanation of his duality, he cited the richly human par-
adoxical nature of his being, and warned the readers of his
EMILE, another pOpular work, to

pardon my paradoxes: they must be made when one thinks

seriously; and whatever you may say, I would rather be

a man of paradoxes than of prejudices.

And a man of paradox Rousseau certainly was. His writings
on the natural education of children by allowing them to in-
tegrate their studies with practical activities that interest
and fascinate them has become the model for the free educa-
tional principles of the 'open classroom' today. Yet Rous-

seau abandoned all five of his illegitimate children to a

foundling home. He was a philosophe, but also a voice

 

against the hypocrisies and false conventions of his time,
and an advocate for the sources of goodness in "natural man."

He became the prophet of the coming romantic movement, and

19

was revered by many of the great intellects of his time, es-
pecially Kant, who acknowledged his indebtedness to him,
writing it

I myself am by inclination a seeker after knowledge;
I thirst for it and well know the eager restlessness
of the desire to know more and the satisfaction that
comes with every step forward. There was a time
when I thought all this was equivalent to the honor
of humanity, and I despised the common herd who know
nothing. Rousseau set me right.21

In his life, as in his writings, Rousseau was essentially
a creature caught up in the flow of powerful and often de-
bilitating emotions. He followed them as his ultimate guide,
rather than his intellect, saying that "I cannot go wrong
about what I have felt, or about what my feelings have led me

22

to do." An understanding of the strong sway that his emo—

tions held over him is the key to the glaring inconsistencies
that we find in his writing and in his behavior, since he him-
self tells us

My passions are extremely strong, and while I am un-

der their sway nothing can equal my impetuosity. I

am amenable to no restraint, respect, fear or deco-

rum. I am cynical, bold, violent, and daring. No

shame can stop me, no fear of danger alarm me. Ex-

cept for the one object in my mind the universe for

me is non-existent. But all this lasts only a moment;

and the next moment plunges me into complete anni-

hilation. Catch me in a calm mood, I am all indo-

lence and timidity.23

Rousseau's preoccupation with the passions and his advo-
cacy of feeling and emotion have led some of his readers to
believe that, for him, reason was a threat rather than the
liberator of mankind, a negative rather than a positive force.

However, his position on reason and feeling was as complex,

20

even enigmatic, as that of his fellow philosophes. Rousseau
wrote many works on the educational and political advantages
that he envisioned in a society guided by reasonable men and
principles. His SOCIAL CONTRACT is as much a vision of a
society liberated by reasonable political and social policies
and institutions as any other of the age. However, his great
gift for infusing passion into fiery phrases that became slo-
gansrinvited popularization and exploitation in the service of
equally passionate reformers and revolutionaries of his own

and later ages. As the dynamic apologist for feeling in his own
time, he offered widely quoted alternatives to the Cartesians
who were inclined to deny emotions in their belief that mind is
the essence of man. Even today, we quote Rousseau's maxim, "I
feel, therefore, I am," as an opening to the romantic revolt
against reason.

In reality, Rousseau's own position on the dynamic inter-
relationship between reason and emotion is as complex as that
of his two colleagues. However, we find in his early work,
DISCOURSE ON THE SCIENCES AND THE ARTS,24 a blistering attack
on the Enlightenment's mania for reason, and one of the clear-
est rejections of the seventeenth century's faith in the ra-
tional potential inherent in man and the physical universe.

In an all-out attack on the arts and sciences as the hidden
enemies of mankind, Rousseau delivered an indictment of the
Western cultural heritage that proved to be a great embarras-
ment to him in later years. Using all his literary powers

to mobilize the passions of his readers, Rousseau suggested

21

that it was not ignorance, superstition, or blind tradition
that were the sources of decay in Western civilization, but
the heritage that stems from Greek rationality and philoso-
phy, so admired by his own society.

In the FIRST DISCOURSE, Rousseau looks back to antiquity,
the cradle of European society, where he finds that the
seeds of the moral decay of Greek civilization were planted
just at the dawning of philosophy and science.

Nascent learning had not yet brought corruption into

the hearts of its inhabitants, but the progress of

the arts, the dissolution of morals, and the yoke of
the Macedonian followed each other closely . . .25

Not only did historical progress bring the decay of moral-
ity, but the so-called Golden Age of Athens was, for Rousseau,
badly tarnished. Athens, proud, wealthy, and imperialistic,
turned away from the moral discipline of Sparta,

that city as renowned for its happy ignorances as for

the wisdom of its laws . . . while the vices that ac-
company the fine arts entered Athens with them . . .25

Moreover, the decay of antiquity was only a paradigm for the
evils of his own society.

Our souls have been corrupted in proportion to the

advancement of our sciences and art toward perfection,

Virtue has fled as their light dawned on our horizon,

and the same phenomenon has been observed in all times

and all places.

Rousseau's ancient advocate in his polemic is none other
than Socrates. He leans heavily on his indictment of artists
and scholars in the APOLOGY. Socrates, in his search for

someone who, like himself, understood the limitations of hu-

man wisdom, found that

22

neither the sophists, nor the poets, nor the orators,
nor the artists, nor I (know) what is the true, the
good, and the beautiful.28

0.

"There," says Rousseau, "you have the wisest of men .'. .

29 Even today, the greatest of philos-

eulogizing ignorance."
ophers would

continue to scorn our vain sciences, he would not help

enlarge that mass of books by which we are flooded

from all sides; and, as he did before, he would leave

behind to his disciples and our posterity no other moral

precept than the example and memory of his virtue.

Clearly, it is not reason as a phenomenon that bothers
Rousseau, but the ill effects of its excesses, especially
when it acts in concert with political figures who, in their
mad desire for power, would distort and stultify the natural
instincts of man. Even more, Rousseau's treatment of virtue
correlates with its centrality to the ethic of sensibility,
the belief that, to the extent that the senses are dulled,
true benevolence and virtuous altruism are thwarted.

Tracing the historical decline of virtue, Rousseau indicts
the Romans, above all. Quoting one of their own Jeremiads,
he cites Seneca, who found that "Since learned men have begun
to appear among us, good men have disappeared."31 Rousseau
adds to this, "Until then, the Romans had been content to
practice virtue, all was lost when they began to study it."32
In her lust for power, grandeur, and wealth, in her mad ob-
session with personal glory and elitism, Rome destroyed the
natural virtues that were her true glory—-1ove of country, of

family, and of one's fellow man. If Fabricius had returned

to Rome in the fullness of her empire, he might have cried

23

out,

Gods, what has become of those thatched roofs and
those hearths where moderation and virtue once dwelt?

0-.

In the natural state, for which Rousseau always yearns,

33

wisdom was instinctive, the innocent understanding of animals
who behave according to their inborn directives, rather than
the unnatural and corrupting directives of society. The
ultimate fate of a society, in which power and wealth falls
into the hands of an elite and corrupt few, is

punishment for the arrogant attempts we have made

to emerge from the happy ignorance in which eternal

Wisdom had placed us.

Rousseau's position on sensibility has another aspect of
particular interest to this study. As in other writers of .
his persuasion, the belief in sentiment as a central ingredi-
ent to altruism and benevolent behavior is central to his
aesthetic. What Diderot found in art, Rousseau found in
music—~that is, a major stimulus to the senses, and thereby,
to the moral faculties. This larger purpose lay at the heart

of Rousseau's attitude toward the changing style in music,

and the raging controversy known as the Querelle des Buffons,

 

a "war of taste" between those who favored French operas, and
those who championed the importation of Italian operas.35' As
a self-taught musician, and the author of a popular opera,

LE VILLAGE DEVIN, Rousseau was as certain of the rightness of

 

his opinion on music, as in everything else. For him, the
older style of counterpoint reeked of the same pedantry that

he attacked in his DISCOURSES. The academic formulae of the

baroque style were, for him, the equivalent of the same intel-
lectual contrivances that suppressed one's natural sensibility.
As the senses lead to involvement and true feeling, So, too,
the turgid nature of counterpoint deadened the "moral effects
it used to produce when it (music) was the voice of nature."36
For Rousseau, the new rococo with its simplicity, thinner
texture, and the sensual appeal of song and melody as in the
Italian style, was part of a larger picture in which he saw
feelings at the center of man's psychological and social being.
Moreover, we find an important correlation between Rous-
seau's musical aesthetic, and the idea that naturalism and
realism in painting serve as a more direct route to the senti-
ments, thereby encouraging their recipients to practice the
benevolence that sensibility seeks. He says that, "Melody
plays exactly the same role in music as drawing does in paint-

ing,"37

placing the emphasis on drawing as the essence of
art, as melody is the essence of music, Rousseau says that
"The features that move us in a painting move us in an etching

as well."38

Keeping this in mind, we will find that Rousseau,
like Diderot, understood the value of spontaneity of line and
form in drawing. In them he found an equivalent immediacy as
in the Fantasias of C. P. E. Bach. In fact, Rousseau echoes
Bach's famous dictum that music must "touch the heart" when
he says

There is no sangfroid in the language of the pas-

siOns; it is a common truth that to move others, one
must oneself be moved.

 

25

One wonders whether Bach knew this writing of Rousseau when he,
himself, said in the VERSUCH, "A musician cannot move others
unless he too is moved."4O 2”

Rousseau and Voltaire were widely read and quoted as au-
thors of literary works that were popular in their own age,
as they are today. Moving on to the third member of the tri-
umvirate, we come to a figure whose fame came chiefly from his
editorship of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA, and whose most significant
writings on sensibility, the passions, and the mysterious dy-
namic of reason and emotion were never published in his life-
time. Yet it is, perhaps, in Diderot, more so than any other
writer of the Enlightenment, that we find the deepest percep-
tion of that special dialectic and the most direct confronta-
tion of the problems inherent in the dualistic view of which
we speak.

This confrontation, in fact, may be the key to what appears
to be the vacillations and contradictions that have puzzled so
many scholars and admirers of Diderot. Despite his position
as editor of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA, his awesome contributions to
science, mechanics, and physics, Diderot's deeper interests
lay in the entire scope of human activity and production. He
wrote works of literature, essays on aesthetics, critiques of
art, and the posthumously published dialogues that touched on
literally every aspect of man's intellectual, social, emotion-
al, and aesthetic life. In these writings, we do not find a
systematic body of thought, but conflicting opinions and ideas

which reflect the author's searching mind.

26

As an astute observer of the contradictions that lay be—
neath public behavior and pious slogans, Diderot was some-
thing of a skeptic; and it is his plurality that helps to
disperse the clouds that sometimes obscure a clear and con-
sistent viewpoint in his thinking. Like Rousseau, Diderot
not only acknowledged his inconsistencies, but embraced them
as human and necessary. A compulsively social person with
an eagerness and curiosity about every realm of life, he ab-
sorbed and reflected on every aspect of the rich life about
him with a spontaneity that was reflected in his writings.
In RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, the author mused on the delight that he
took in his daily afternoon walks when the discipline of the
day could be put aside and he could

discuss with myself questions of politics, love,

taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly,

give it free rein to follow any idea, wise or mad,

that may come uppermost; I chase it as do our young

libertines along Foy's Walk, when they are on the

track of a courtesan whose mein is giddy and face

smiling, whose nose turns up. The youth drops one

and picks up another pursuing all and clinging to
none; my ideas are my trollops.

The essence of RAMEAU'S NEPHEW lies in its recognition of
opposites, whether in the character of the Nephew, in the phi-
losopher, or in the realm of the intellect, where, as in
chess, "one sees the most surprising strokes and . . . one

"42 In life, as in every human

hears the stupidest remarks.
being, one finds the irony inherent in the necessary conflict
of opposites. It is here that we find the modernity and plu-

ralism of Diderot, as Opposed to the search for utopian

clarity and truth in Descartes.

27

Ultimately, this pluralism is the factor that ties Diderot's
sprawling ideas and opinions together, giving them an under-
lying coherence. Early in his career, Diderot wrotekin his
PENSEES of his lifelong commitment to an open-ended search for

truth. "It should be insisted upon that I look for the truth,

"43

but not that I find it. More importantly to this study,

this ongoing search gives us the key to Diderot's position on
the relationship between reason and emotion. Otis Fellows, in
his study DIDEROT, puts it most clearly when he writes

This maxim was to guide Diderot throughout his life.
In his search for truth the still youthful author of
the PENSEES PHILOSOPHIQUES tells us that each indi-
vidual has only one real guide. It is la petite lu-
miere (glimmer) of his reason set in motion by the
drive of his passions. Only in this way can we depend
upon the accuracy of our own perceptions and feelings
rather than upon the opinions of others, unless by
chance these opinions strike a sympathetic chord and
can also be verified by experience.

 

 

Diderot's modernity and skepticism are found most clearly
in two dialogues that never came to light during his lifetime
because of their radical and shocking content. In both RA-
MEAU'S NEPHEW and D'ALEMBERT'S DREAM, Diderot presented an ar-
gument between himself and an antagonist or adversary who
either debated Diderot or became the mouthpiece for criti-

cisms and radical notions that the philosophe could not ex—

 

press openly. It is for this reason that many critics have
interpreted these works as a technique for the writer to
articulate his most controversial opinions in the guise of

the opposing partner in the dialogue.

28

Such an explanation would be too simplistic for such
enigmatic and puzzling works as these. Although they are
dialectical in the sense of two opposing characters,kneith-
er one holds a viewpoint clear-cut enough to allow this ex-
planation. In the case of D'ALEMBERT'S DREAM, there seems
to be an obvious dichotomy in the two Opposing views--D'Alem-
bert, the materialist, Diderot, the sensationalist. Neither
one wins the laurel wreath of victory, and each one reveals
the flaws in the two respective positions. In the case of
RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, the situation is even more ambiguous.
Diderot keeps us wondering throughout the works as to the
function and identity of the Nephew. We constantly ask our-
selves whether he is the alter ego of the author, the id,
or merely the antagonist.

Careful reading, however, will show that RAMEAU'S NEPHEW
is one of Diderot's most important statements on the passions
and an acknowledgement of the complex biological and psycho-
logical nature of man. On the surface, it might appear that
the Nephew an; nothing more than an irascible, lazy and cyn-
ical fellow, an impudent rascal unhampered by polite, social
behavior. Diderot tells us,

The fellow is a compound of elevation and abjectness,

of good sense and lunacy. The ideas of decency and

depravity must be strangely scrambled in his head,

for he shows without obstentation the good qualities

that nature has bestowed upon him, just as he does

the bad ones without shame.45

RAMEAU'S NEPHEW is not simply a matter of the id pitted

against the superego. Rather, it makes brilliant use of

29

irony and satire to expose the basic incongruities, the
amalgam of greed and generosity, laziness and motivation,
mediocrity and talent, wisdom and foolishness, that Comprise
all men. The Nephew reminds his opposite that he does exact-

ly "what you and I do, namely good and evil.n46

He is a
brilliant device for the author's own recognition of his di-
verse nature--the moralist and the sensualist, the husband-
father and the lover, the driving editor of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA
and the artist. But most of all, the Nephew is an argument
for the primacy of the passions. In his more formal writings,
Diderot had proclaimed that

All that is inspired by the passions, I forgive.

It is not their consequences that concern me. And

then, as you know, I have always been the apologist

for strong passions; they alone move me. Whether
they inspire wonder or terror, I feel them strongly.

47
In RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, we have a character who rants and
raves, resorts to wild comic posturing, finds the most "im-

"48 and

portant thing is to keep the bowels moving freely,
pantomimes the society of his day so brilliantly that "myself
hardly knew whether to burst with laughter or with indigna-

tion."49

Yet he understands the complexities of man in some
ways more clearly than the philOSOpher. The truth of his
statements lies in the fact that " . . . the chief difference
between my man and the rest of us (is that) He admits his
vices, which are also ours: He was no hypocrite."50
The Nephew becomes the means by which Diderot makes his

most potent statement on the passions and their primal role

in behavior} With his cynical retorts, the Nephew exposes

30

the pretensions and postures of polite men in society. He
speaks, as it were, from his viscera rather than from his
head, revealing the passions that underly all behavior, good
and evil, social and personal. Diderot calls him an eccen-
tric because his

character stands out from the rest and breaks that

tedious uniformity which our education, our social

conventions, and our customary good manners have

brought about. If such a character makes his appear-

ance in some circle, he is like a grain of yeast that

ferments and restores to each of us a part of his

native individuality. He shakes and stirs us up,

makes us praise or blame, smokes out the truth, dis-

closes the worthy and unmasks the rascals.51

Using the Nephew's lack of restraint, Diderot is able to
examine and criticize a wide spectrum of the cultural life
of his time, commenting on literature, classical drama, art,
philosophy, and especially music. In fact, it is in the pas-
sages on music that we find his theory of the passions to be
most explicitly stated, a theory germane to the aesthetic of
Bach's Fantasias.

Examining the passages on music, we find them to be the
means by which Diderot states his belief in the passions as
the force that mobilizes man's involvement either in society
or in art. Diderot dwells on expression as the most basic
principle of music, that which is served by all of the tech-
niques available to the musician--melody, declamation, accent,
and form. Inevitably, technique serves the expressive func-
tion of music with its unique ability to mobilize the passions.

Using the remarkable talent for pantomime of the Nephew, Dide-

rot has him act and sing an air from Jomelli's JEREMIAH which

31

describes the desolation of Jerusalem, he drenched
in tears which drew their like from every onlooker.
(His art was complete--delicacy of voice, expres-
sive strength, true sorrow.52 ‘

From this, Diderot goes on to examine the stylistic issues

so hotly debated in the Querelle de Buffons, declaring final-

 

ly that, whatever the means, iJI music "Our passions have to

be strong."53

Diderot's position on music, as stated in RAMEAU'S NEPHEW,

is so complex and so central to the musical aesthetic of C.

P. E. Bach, that it will receive full examination later in this

chapter when Bach's aesthetic is discussed. For now, our

concern is with the theory of the passions as it relates to
the special dialectic of reason and emotion. Even here, Dide-
rot resorts to a musical idiom to express his view that soci-
ety is rife with hypocrisy and self-delusion, that virtue and
stoical denial of pleasure are for appearance sake, and that
one must behave in public accordingly. The Nephew says,

Your only chance is to keep your wits about you, to
be fertile. You must know how to prepare and estab-
lish your major keys, seize the right instant. When,
for example, opinions are divided and the debate has
reached the highest pitch, no one listening and all
talking at once, you should be somewhat to one side,
in the corner of the room farthest from the battle-
field and your explosion should be timed after a long
pause so as to crash suddenly like a bombshell among
the combatants. No one has mastered this art like
me. Yet my really surprising skill is in the oppo-
site vein. I have mild notes accompanied by smiles,
an infinite variety of faces expressing agreement.

In these, nose, mouth, brows, and eyes participate.

I have a flexibility of spine, a way of twisting it,
of shrugging or sagging, of stretching out my fingers,
of nodding and shutting my eyes, of being thunder—
struck as if I heard a divine angel's voice come down
from heaven--this it is to flatter. I don't know
whether you grasp the whole force of this last

32

attitude of mine. I did not invent it, but no one
has surpassed me in performance. Just look!54

However, Diderot's most personal statement on the delicate

0.

balance between sensual indulgence and reasonable restraint
comes from his own mouth. Arguing with the Nephew that the

bane of the upper classes is idleness and boredom, he finds

that "Pleasure is always their business, never a desire."55

Overindulgence in sensual gratification ends up in dulling
the senses, while moderation and true concern for one's fel-
low man and those whom one loves bring deeper gratification.

They wear everything out. Their soul gets dull,
boredom masters them. Whoever should take their
life at the height of their load of plenty would be
doing them a good turn. For they know of pleasure
only that portion which soonest loses its zest. I
am far from despising sensual pleasures. I have a
palate too and it is tickled by the delicate wines
or dishes; I have eyes and a heart and I like to look
at a pretty woman, like to feel the curve of her breast
under my hand, to press her lips to mine, drink bliss
from her eyes and die of ecstasy in her arms. Some-
times a gay party with my friends, even if it becomes
a little rowdy, is not displeasing to me. But I must
confess that I find it infinitely sweeter to succor
the unfortunate, to disentangle a bad business, to
give helpful advice, to read some pleasant book, to
take a walk with a man or woman who is dear to me,
to spend a few instructive hours with my children, to
write a page of good prose, to carry out my duties,
or to tell her whom I love something tender and true
which brings her arms about my neck.

Here we have the eighteenth—century ethic of moderation, re-
straint, and the happy marriage of reason and emotion most
clearly stated.

In the second dialogue, D'ALEMBERT'S DREAM, we find a
clear-cut debate between two figures who articulate two sep-

arate beliefs--one the materialist arguing for a split

33

between mind and body, the other a sensationalist, arguing
for the conjunction of mind and body. D'Alembert, the ma—
terialist, accuses Diderot of "trying to eliminate the dis-

S7

tinction between mind and matter." The latter responds by

asking

Can you maintain with Descartes that this is noth-

ing but an imitative machine? If so, even the smal-

lest children will make fun of you, and philoso-

phers will tell you that if this is a machine, you're

another.

On the other hand, if you admit that there is no

difference between you and the animals except in

degree of organization, you will show reason and com-

mon sense . . .58
Diderot argues that D'Alembert's split would deny the essen-
tial interrelationship between sensory and reasoning facul-
ties just as it would deny man's complex psychological real-
ity, one that entails "life, sensation, memory, conscience,
passion and thought."59

Here we have a trustworthy definition of sensibility for
the purposes of this study. Diderot, despite his subscrip-
tion to notions about sensibility as manifested in other
works of art and literature, does not lose sight of the essen-
tial principle of complementary relationships. As we have
seen throughout the writings quoted here, he returns again
and again to a notion that the human organism functions as
an amalgam.of desire and restraint, impulse and contemplation,
reason and sensation. Rather than the near-religious fervor
of the novelist, Laurence Sterne,60 we find emotions and pas-

sions, one's sensibilities, to be the catalyst that blows the

‘ spark of reason into warm, glowing light. Similarly, we will

 

34

find that the principle underlying C. P. E. Bach's Fantasias
rests upon the essential interrelationship between form and
feeling, intellect and emotion, technical discipline and
spontaneous creation. Despite their improvisational charac-
ter, they are the product of a master craftsman. Yet emo—
tion and creative genius function as catalysts transforming
academic exercise into the realm of music as art. Perhaps
the definition of sensibility in Diderot's own ENCYCLOPEDIA
might have been shared by musician and philosophe. In 1765,

the ENCYCLOPEDIA defined 'Sensibilité' as a

 

'Tender and delicate disposition of the soul which
renders it easy to be moved and touched [giving]
one a kind of wisdom concerning matters of virtue
[that] is far more penetrating than the intellect
acting alone . . . sensibility makes a man virtu-
ous, sensibility is the moving spirit which ani-
mates belief.6

With this definition in hand, Diderot's insistent return
to a musical metaphor as the means by which he articulates
his sensationalist position in D'ALEMBERT'S DREAM may be ex-
plained. Just as Bach will suggest that the expressive pow-
er of music leads to a synthesis of mind and senses in the
pathway to the higher reaches of understanding, Diderot ar-
gues for the necessary cooperation of mind and senses in his
dialogue. D'Alembert contends that ideas must be separate
and distinct from feelings for clarity's sake so that

the object which remains as it were under the mind's

eye, while the mind concerns itself with those qual-

_ities of the object which it will either affirm or
‘deny.52

35

Diderot responds by comparing the mechanism of human
thought and response to the phenomenon involved in the strik-
ing of the inanimate strings of a keyboard instrument.

We humans are instruments gifted with sensation and

memory. Our senses are merely keys that are struck

by the natural world around us. I have sometimes
been led to compare the fibers that make up our sense
organs with sensitive, vibrating strings. The string
vibrates and makes a sound for a long time after it
has been plucked. It is a vibration of this sort,

it is this kind of necessary resonance, that keeps

an object present to our minds, while our understand-

ing deals with each of its qualities we please to
study.53

Here we have two faculties of sensation and reflection as
defined by Locke, but illustrated in terms of the mechanism
of a musical instrument. Like the human organism, it re-
mains inanimate until its delicate sensory receptors are
activated. This sensory response, however, is not an end in
itself, either in the instrument or in human understanding.
Rather, the keyboard instrument receives outward stimuli that
will eventually act to convey the deeper meaning of the music,
a function central to Bach's musical aesthetic. Similarly,
Diderot's "human instrument" receives impressions in order to
subject them to

that stupendous chain of reasoning . . . the object

which remains as it were under the mind's eye, while

the mind concerns itself with those qualities of the

object which it will either affirm or deny.54

In this duality between sense and reason together with a
notion that emotions and passions are complex, whimsical,

self—serving, and frequently unpredictable, we find the key

to the connection between sensibility in the writers we have

36

examined here, and Bach's music of sensibility, his empfind-
samkeit. We have already noted that Rousseau's criticisms
of the older style of music rest upon his belief that the
academic formulae of the baroque style were contrived and
unnatural, obscuring the natural flow between mind and emo-
tion, the first concern of the music. Similarly, Diderot's
writings on music. as well as literature and art are heavily
infused with his dislike of the contrivances of the past.
He, too, looks for a naturalism and immediacy that will di-
minish the distance between the creator and the receiver of
art.

Diderot's aesthetic rests upon his belief that it is only
when emotions are high and an individual is truly involved in
the feelings of others, that art fulfills its higher moral
and aesthetic functions. He writes,

It is considered an affront to reason if one ventures

to say a word in favor of its rivals, the passions,

that one can elevate the soul to great things. With-

out them, there is no sublime either in morality or
in achievements.65

His conviction that an individual must identify and be sig-
nificantly involved with his fellow man if he is to behave
virtuously lies beneath Diderot's adulation of the novelist,
Richardson, whom he places on a level with Shakespeare. For
Diderot, Richardson's genius lies in his great skill in de-
lineating characters who are flesh and blood with whom the
reader can both identify and empathize. Richardson's "drama
is reality, the people he places before us are as real as
possible . . . the passions he depicts are the passions I

feel myself."66

 

 

37

Involvement alone, however, is not a powerful enough stim-
ulus to force the individual to deny his own pleasures for
the sake of another. A healthy dose of suffering is‘a neces-
sary ingredient to move one to the proper level of largess.

In his works, as in life, men are divided into two

classes: those who live a life of pleasure, and

those who suffer. It is with the latter he makes

me identify myself, and without my being conscious

of it, my capacity for pity is exercised and strength-

ened. His books have left a pleasing strain of melan-

choly in my character that does not fade.

In art, the great apostle of sensibility was Jean Baptiste
Greuze, whose paintings were as didactic and moralistic as
their literary counterparts. Diderot admired the deep sim-
plicity and naturalism in Greuze's paintings. He felt that,
in them, realism combined with deep emotion. was a powerful
stimuluSIXJthe better instincts of their viewers. Greuze's
THE VILLAGE GATHERING sentimentally portrayed a homely scene,
deeply moving in its tenderness; a young couple modestly and
reverently asking permission of the bride's father to be wed,
while the younger sister looked on with tearful eye. Simi-
larly, Diderot found that Greuze's DEATH OF A PARALYTIC was
richly human, contrasting

the varying nuances of grief on each face, and

the working out of the various relationships of

the characters to the dying man.

In his writings on the SALON OF 1765, Diderot singled out
Greuze's sketch THE BELOVED MOTHER as an example of natural-
ism. In an idyllic setting of family happiness and the bliss
of motherhood, Diderot found Greuze to capture not only the

mother's "joy and tenderness"69 as she surrounded herself

38

by her six loving children, but her natural weariness, her
"weakness manifesting itself in spite of happiness and ten-

70 Every down-to-earth detail is in the piCture,

derness."
including husband, maid, dog, and basket of fresh linen.
The sense of order and well—being gives

a portrait of what a happy home should be. It

preaches this lesson to every sensible man: 'Keep

your family in comfort and take care to have a home

to which to return.'71

Diderot looked for this naturalism in music as well, and
this notion forms the core of his musical aesthetic. Although
he was not himself a musician, Diderot was deeply involved in
the war between the Italian and French style in opera, the
battleground upon which larger issues of stylistic change in
music were being fought. In RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, the Nephew, a
professional musician and relative of the greatest French
composer of the day, becomes a mouthpiece not only for Dide-
rot's views on changing forms and styles in music, but, most
of all, for a changing aesthetic.

Just as Diderot found that the contrived formalism of aca-
demic styles in literature and art served the unnatural imag-
es of the aristocratic society, he attacked the formal and
contrived format for French opera on the same ground. Taking
the position of devil's advocate, the philosopher asked the
Nephew if he can "manage to find beauty in these new-fangled
melodies . . . of Duni and our other young composers?"72

The question, of course, is calculated to light the fuse that

will set off an explosion of invective against the revered

39

figures of traditional French classical music. Equally im-
passioned is the Nephew's defense of radical changes in style
and form, and, above all, the naturalism of expression in
those "young composers," who appeal to a wider middle class
audience with no patience for "the music of the divine Lully,
of Campra, of Destouches, of Mouret, and--it must be said be-
tween us--of your dear uncle, (they) must be a trifle dull.”3
In music, as in literature and art, Diderot's aesthetic
rests upon his insistence that art must move its receiver
emotionally. It must present ideas and feelings that are
real and natural. Just as Diderot admired Richardson's char-
acters for their flesh and blood realism, and Greuze's BE-
LOVED MOTHER as projecting both the tenderness and weariness
of her real condition in life, music, too, is an "imitative

74

art (that) finds its real models in nature." Here we find

the underlying premise to which he returns again and again--
that nature and not formula: is the seed from which all true
art springs. Diderot's repulsion for rigid tradition that
ignores nature lies at the center of his thought, whether it
be aesthetic, social, or political. His essay, THE ENCYCLO-
PEDIA, synthesizes these diverse strands, and he writes,

Today, when philosophy is advancing with gigantic
strides, when it is bringing under its sway all the
matters that are its proper concern, when its tone
is the dominant one, and when we are beginning to
shake off the yoke of authority and tradition in
order to hold fast to the laws of reason, there is
scarcely a single elementary or dogmatic book which
satisfies us entirely. We find that these works are
put together out of the productions of a fgg men and
are not founded upon the truths of nature.

40

It is in the new Italianate style of music, with its em-
phasis upon melody that the rule of nature takes precedence,
and the complementary nature of vocal melody and spoken dec-
lamation becomes the model for music that will touch the
heart, the cornerstone of C. P. E. Bach's aesthetic.

Did anyone imagine that the public could learn to
weep or laugh at tragic or comic scenes when "mu-
sicated," to respond to the tones of fury, hatred,
and jealousy, the true plaints of love, the irony
and pleasantries of the Italian or French theater,
and that in spite of all this the public would con-
tinue to admire Ragonde or Platee? Taradiddle, tol-
lol-layl That they could once learn how easily,
softly, gently, the Italian tongue, with its natur—
al harmony, flexible prosody, easy ellipses and in-
versions, suited the art and motion of music, the
turns of song and the measured pace of sounds--and
yet would overlook the fact that French is stiff,
heavy, pedantic, and monotonous? Well, well, well,
they persuaded themselves that after weeping with

a mother bewailing the loss of her son, and shudder-
ing at the decree of a tyrant committing murder, they
would not be bored with their fairyland, their insip-
id mythology, their saccharine love songs, which
show the poet's bad taste no less than the sterility
of the music matched hereto. The good souls!

However, Diderot does not confine himself to vecal music.
For him, as for C. P. E. Bach, vocal music is a model for
stylistic changes in instrumental music, as well. Since vo-
cal music emanates from the human organism without the inter-
vening mechanism of an instrument, it lies closest to human
feelings, to the heart. The new instrumental style emu-
lates the flow and emotional tenor of song. Italian opera
exudes the sensual warmth of beautiful melody rather than
the formal polish of strictly metered French recitative.77

The Nephew, acerbic and outspoken as he is, declares that

"Pergolesi's . . . STABAT MATER should have been burned by

41

the public hangman,"78 in favor of "those confounded bggf-
fogs with their SERVA PADRONA and their TRACELLO."79
Speaking as mouthpiece for Diderot himself, the Nephew de-

clares that it is in the cadres of Italian comic opera that

the new instrumental forms will find their models.

The good souls! They have given up their sym—
phonies to play the Italian ones. They thought they
could accustom their ears to these new instrumental
pieces without changing their taste as regards the
vocal--as if symphonies were not in relation to songs
(except for the greater freedom afforded by the range
of instruments and the dexterity of the fingers) what
songs are to declamation; as if the violin did not
ape the singer, who in turn will become the ape of
the violin when acrobatics will have replaced beauty.
The first one who played Locatelli was the apostle
of the new music. Next! Next! We shall all become
accustomed to the imitation of passionate accents or
of natural phenomena by means of voices and instru-
ments-—which is the whole extent of music's pur-
pose.

Here we have C. P. E. Bach's musical aesthetic clearly and
concisely stated.

Keeping this aesthetic principle in mind, we are ready
for the shift from France to Germany and the intellectual
climate that nurtured innovation and change in the Fantasias
of C. P. E. Bach. Here we will find an example in music of
the vocal style translated to a keyboard instrument that
Diderot espoused. Even more, it is in the late keyboard
works of Bach that we will find the unique characteristic
that music alone possesses, the ability to articulate meaning
without the focus of language or the graphic medium of paint-
ing. In music, more so than any other art form, we have the

duality of which we have spoken in this chapter: the

42

correspondence between reason and emotion, sense and mind,
spontaneity and form, articulated in the writings of those
figures examined here. Our task now will be to showtthe
manner in which these ideas were absorbed into German Enlight-
enment thinking, the new aesthetics of German art, literature
and music, and finally, the Fantasias of C. P. E. Bach. For
this, we move on to the next chapter that examines this phe-
nomenon, the manner in which music becomes a song without

words.

FOOTNOTES

Chapter One

 

1'Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, FAUST, Halcyon House, Garden
City, New York, p. 48.

2“Voltaire, THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV AND OTHER SELECTED WRITINGS,
translated by J. H. Brumfitt, Washington Square Press, Inc.,
New York, 1963, p. 122.

3'D'Alembert, ELEMENTS DE PHILOSOPHE, from Ernst Cassirer,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, Beacon Press, Boston,
1951, p. 4.

4'Locke, John, THE LIMITS OF UNDERSTANDING, from CENTURY OF
GENIUS: EUROPEAN THOUGHT 1600-1700, Richard T. Vann, ed.,
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967, p. 64.

5’A parody of Goya's painting THE SLEEP OF REASON PRODUCES
MONSTERS, well known to all students of the eighteenth cen-
tury, and the most powerful eXpression of the lurking ir-
rationality in man when reason is no longer on guard. As
the artist, sitting at his desk, doses, frightful bats, owls
and menacing cats emerge from his dream world.

6'Descartes, Rene, MEDITATIONS ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY, transla-
tion and introduction by Laurence Lafleur, Bobbs-Merrill
Educational Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1977, p. 18.

7'ibid., p. 20.

8'Diderot, Denis, RAMEAU'S NEPHEW AND OTHER WORKS, translated
by Jacques Barzun and Ralph H. Bowen, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc.,
Indianapolis, Indiana and New York, p. 20.

9'ibid., p. 29.

10'Ridgway, R. 5., VOLTAIRE AND SENSIBILITY, McGill-Queen's
University Press, Montreal, London, 1973, p. 11.

ll'ibid., This author says that "Voltaire's fame as a poet of
this conception of love exceeded that of Racine, "and he cites
the numerous romantic heroines he created. This quotation, as
in all the ensuing quotations from Ridgway were given in French,
and they are my translations.

12'ibid., "Immodéré." p. 37.

43

44

l3'ibid., p. 60.

l4'Voltaire, CANDIDE OR OPTIMISM, Norman L. Torrey, ed.,
translated by Richard Aldington, AHM Publishing Corpora-
tion, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 1946, p. 113. t

ls'ibid., p. 115.

16'Voltaire, CANDIDE, ZADIG, AND SELECTED STORIES, translated
by Donald M. Frame, New American Library, New York, Scarbo-
rough, Ontario, 1961, p. 165.

l7'ibid., p. 167.

18'ibid., p. 167.

19'op. cit., Ridgway, p. 19.

20'Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, THE FIRST AND SECOND DISCOURSES,
Roger D. Masters, ed., St. Martin's Press, New York, 1964,
p. 25.

21'Jaspers, Carl, KANT, from THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS, VOLUME I,
Hannah Arendt, ed., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York,
London, 1962, p. 5.

22'Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, CONFESSIONS OF JEAN-JACQUES
ROUSSEAU, translation and introduction by J. H. Cohen, Pen—
guin Books, Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1954,
p. 8.

23'ibid., p. 44.

24'op. cit., Rousseau, THE FIRST AND SECOND DISCOURSES,
p. 40. Interestingly, Rousseau's DISCOURSES won the praise
of the Academy of DiJon in 1750, the century's halfway mark.

25'ibid., p. 40.

26’ibid., p. 43.

27'ibid., p. 40.

28'ibid., p. 44.

29'ibid., p. 44.

30'ibid., p. 45.

31'ibid., p. 45.

32'ibid., p. 45.

45

33’ibid., p. 45.

34'ibid., p. 62.

35. . . . . p

This controversy over changing style In muSIC became so
"hot" that it took on the character of a political issue with
all of the attendant fear and suspicion. At its most heated
moments, secrecy and subterfuge prevailed, and partisans of
either side devised a special knock to identify themselves.
The response would be "puccini-ist or Gluckist?" For an ex-
cellent monograph on this phenomenon, see Robert Isherwood's
article QUERRELLE DE BUFFONS.

 

36’Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, ESSAY ON THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES
INCLUDING A DISCUSSION OF MELODY AND MUSICAL IMITATION,
translated by Victor Gurevitch, Mss., p. 79.

37‘ibid., p. 57.

38.ibidol p. 57.

39Rousseau, Jean—Jacques, DICTIONNAIRE DE MUSIQUE, Holdheim:
George Olns Verlagsbuchhaudlung, New York, Johnson Reprint
Corporation, 1969. p. 4.

40'Bach, C. P. E., ESSAY ON THE TRUE ART OF PLAYING KEYBOARD
INSTRUMENTS, translated and edited by William J. Mitchell,
Eulenburg Books, London, 1974, p. 152.

41’op. cit., Diderot, RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, p. 8.

42'ibid., p. a.

43'Fellows, Otis, DIDEROT, Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall.&
Co., Boston, 1977, p. 40.

44'ibid., p. 40.

45'op. cit., Diderot, RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, p. 8. Further down,
Diderot wrote "he has no greater opposite than himself."

46'ibid., p. 11.

47'op. cit., Ridgway, p. 11, " Tout ce que la passion inspire,
je 1e pardonne. Il n'y a que les consequences qui me’cho-
quent. Et puis, vous 1e savez, j'ai de tout temps ete
l’apologiste des passions fortes; elles seules m’émeuvent.
Qu’elles m’inspirent de l’admiration ou de 1’effroi, je sens
fortement ."

48'op. cit., Diderot, RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, p. 24.

49'ibid., p. 25.

46

50'ibid., p. 74.

Sl'ibid., Pp. 9-10.

52'ibid., p. 67.

53'ibid., p. 70.

54'ibid., p. 42.

55'ibid., p. 36.

56°ibid., p. 36.

57'Diderot, Denis, D'ALEMBERT'S DREAM, from RAMEAU'S NEPHEW
AND OTHER WORKS, translated by Jacques Barzun and Ralph H.
Bowen, Bobbs—Merrill Co., Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana and
New York, p. 100.

58'ibid., p. 102.

59‘ibid., p. 102.

60'Sterne, Lawrence, A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, from VIRTUE IN
DISTRESS; STUDIES IN THE NOVEL OF SENTIMENT by George Bris-
sendon, MacMillan Co., London, New York, 1982, pp. 277-278.
This novel is the best source for this aspect of sensibility
which took on the features of a cult as it progressed.
Sterne's hero in this novel, Yorick, gives us the sense that
sensibility has become a quasi-religion.

Dear sensibility! source inexhausted in all that's
precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows!

thou chainest tflur martyr down upon his bed of straw
- and 'tis thou who lifts him up to HEAVEN - eternal
fountain of our feelings! - 'tis here I trace thee

- and this is thy divinity which stirs within me -
not, that in some sad and sickening moments, 'my soul
shrinks back uppn herself, and startles at destruc-
tion' - mere pomp of words! - but that I feel some
generous joys and generous cares beyond myself - all
comes from thee, great - great SENSORIUM of the world!
which vibrates, if a hair of our heads but falls up-
on the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation.

61'Brissendon, Geprge, ENCYCLOPEDIE V (Neufachastel, 1765)
S.V. "sensibilite," from VIRTUE IN DISTRESS; STUDIES IN THE
NOVEL OF SENTIMENT, MacMillan Co., London, New York, 1982,
p. 47.

62'op. cit., Diderot, D'ALEMBERT'S DREAM, from RAMEAU'S NEPH-
‘EW, pp. 99-100.

 

 

47

63'ibid., p. 101.

64'ibid., p. 99.

65°Crocker, Lester, ed., DIDEROT'S SELECTED WRITINGSt MacMil-
lan Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1962, p. 109.

66'ibid., p. 111.

67'ibid., p. 298.

68'ibid., p. 109.

69°Diderot, Denis, AN ESSAY ON PAINTING, THE SALON OF 1765,
THREE SKETCHES BY GRUEZE, from Elizabeth G. Holt, ed., A DO-
CUMENTARY HISTORY OF ART, VOLUME II, Doubleday Books, Garden
City, New York, 1958, p. 317.

70‘ibid., p. 317.

7l’ibid., p. 317. The last three quotations were taken from
Diderot's writings on Greuze, an artist of sensibility of whom
he was especially fond. Because of problems inherent in cov-
ering so much diverse material, it was necessary to leave out
some of his important thoughts on nature as a model, and the
issue of naturalism in art. In Chapter One, MY ECCENTRIC
THOUGHTS ON DRAWING, for example, Diderot attacks the con-
trived situation of the studio, of "academic positions,
strained, prepared, arranged . . . what have these to do with
the positions and actions of nature?" p. 312, Holt. Diderot
advises the art student to abandon the studio, and go out in—
to the "streets, in parks, in markets, in houses, and you will
gain just ideas of true movement in the actions of life.. . .
Study them closely, and you will be contemptuous of your insip-
id professor's teaching and of imitating your insipid model."
p. 314, Holt. The correlation to the reaction against the con-
trived and academic nature of counterpoint is obvious. In
fact, Diderot comes very close to the aesthetic concept that
lies at the center of Bach's Fantasias in this essay. Con-
trast, as it reflects contrast in passions in real characters,
defines Bach's musical style, and Diderot addresses this issue
specifically. He writes that "Ill—understood contrast is one
of the most fatal causes of the mannered. The only real con-
trast arises from the basis of the action, or from the dif-
ference either in organism or in interest. Look at Raphael,
Le Sueur; they sometimes place three, four, or five figures
-upright one beside the other, and the effect of it is sublime.
At mass or vespers at the Carthusians', you see forty or fif-
ty monks in two long parallel rows, same stalls, same function,
same vestment, and yet no two of the monks are alike; look

for no other contrast than this that distinguishes them.

Here is the truth; all else is mischievous and false." p. 314,
Holt.

48

72'op. cit., Diderot, RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, p. 62.

73'ibid., p. 64.

74'ihid., p. 62. ‘

75'Diderot, Denis, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA, from RAMEAU'S NEPHEW
AND OTHER WORKS, translated by Jacques Barzun and Ralph H.
Bowen, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., Indianapolis, New York, 1954,
p. 287.

76'op. cit., Diderot, RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, p. 65.

Q

77'This issue is thoroughly discussed in Chapter Two because
of its centrality to Bach's musical principle.

78'op. cit., Diderot, RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, p. 64.

79'ibid., p. 64.

80’1bid., p. 65.

CHAPTER TWO
THE MUSICAL PRINCIPLE, SONG WITHOUT WORDS

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,
Profoundest harmonist,
United novelty and beauty;
Was great
In text-led strains
But greater yet
In bold wordless music;
Epitaph by Klopstock on
monument honoring Carl

Philipp Emanuel Bach in
Hamburg.

When music becomes a vehicle for the articulation of ideas
and thoughts that meld reason and emotion and cannot be ex-
pressed by language alone, we have the phenomenon that under-
lies the aesthetic of C. P. E. Bach in FUR KENNER UND LIEB-
HABER. Whatever his technical means, we will find Bach's ul-
timate purpose to be that just described in RAMEAU'S NEPHEW.-

In the translation of the Italian vocal style to instrumental

music, Bach achieved the "imitation of passionate accents or

natural phenomena by means of voices or instruments-~which is
the whole extent of music's purpose."2

Clearly, Bach's aesthetic did not spring out of a cultural
.vacuum and the echo of Diderot's thought by the German musi-

cian is no accident. Our purpose in examining the writings

of the three leading French philosophes has been to show the

 

manner in which their thoughts express the general tenor of
the Enlightenment and the substance of sensibility as it
reconciles the two poles of reason and emotion. Having

49

50

acknowledged the central importance of their views on sensi-
bility, we must now trace the transition of their ideas into
Germany and its intellectual climate. In particulaf" we are
interested in the manner in which these ideas appear to have
influenced C. P. E. Bach, despite the absence of any specif-
ic confirmation that Bach had absorbed French notions about
sensibility. For this, we must rely upon the tangential ev-
idence that exposes the derivative nature of the early German
Enlightenment.

To begin with, we must keep the special circumstances of
the early German Enlightenment in mind. Germany, at the out-
set of the century, remained both isolated and conservative
in her political and social institutions, and, thereby, in her
intellectual development. Initially, German thinkers turned
to foreign soil as they began to emerge from the conservative
tenor of pre-Enlightenment thinking into the radical milieu
of the Enlightenment. Until they had found their own identity,
they looked to France and England for their models, and her own
culture was seen as crude, almost barbaric.

In this sense the German Enlightenment began as an undertow
beneath the tidal wave of non-German thought, particularly
the French. Just as the court of Frederick the Great was a
miniature Versaille in architecture, and a model of French
manners, mores, styles, and tastes in literature, the German

intelligentsia eagerly imbibed the charismatic writings of the

 

leading French philosophes. Arnold Hauser in THE SOCIAL HIS-

TORY OF ART has said that Rousseau in particular found his

51

most enthusiastic audience in Germany where he was adulated.
German writers with their deep romantic yearnings and frus-
trated rebelliousness against a rigid, stratified social sys-
tem adopted Rousseau as a messiah who would lead them out of
the bureaucratic snare that rewarded banality, mediocrity,
and slavish obedience to an outmoded system. Hauser writes,

Voltaire and Rousseau became household words in Germany

almost simultaneously, but the influence of Rousseau

was incomparably deeper and wider than that of Vol-

taire. Even in France, Rousseau did not find so many

and such enthusiastic supporters as he did in Germany.

The whole "Storm and Stress" movement, Lessing, Kant,

Goethe, and Schiller were dependent on him and acknow-

ledged their indebtedness to him. Kant saw in Rous-

seau the "Newton of the moral world," and Herder called

him a "saint and prophet."3

In the case of Voltaire, his special relationship to Fred-
erick the Great, and his extended residence at court is es-

pecially important to this study. One must assume that C. P.

E. Bach had some contact with the philosophe since he, too,

 

was in residence at the court for 35 years. However, Voltaire
was not directly involved in the controversy over musical
style and taste as were Rousseau and Diderot. For our pur-
poses, it is his relationship to Frederick the Great that most
interests us, since it shows in microcosm the manner in

which German culture during the early part of the century
emulated all things French. Frederick, like the nation that
he ruled, lacked both national identity and pride in his
youth. We find his attitude toward Voltaire as a young man
almost that of neophyte to revered mentor rather than the

Prince of a great nation expecting equality and mutual respect.

52

While French culture possesses brilliance that emanates
from the elegance and polish of her classical art and litera-

ture, the sparkling wit of her writers and philosophes, the

 

German temperament tends toward seriousness, depth and a high
personal integrity. Given this particular combination, we
find German thought to have a substance and thoroughness that
joins with the originality that integrity demands. The re-
sult of these tendencies has been to produce the great fig-
ures that have had a major effect upon Western thinking.
Martin Luther's insistence upon inner conscience as the ul-
timate guide produced the major religious schism of premodern
Europe. Similarly, the Germanization of the emerging aes-
thetic ideas that we have examined in French writers changed
them significantly. Here, the notion of sensibility took two
different directions as it became the springboard for develop-
ing German thought and aesthetic change.

An understanding of the German mind and character is of
particular importance here. Although we have been dealing
with ideas that were largely French in origin, C. P. E. Bach's
music was thoroughly German in its style, its ethos, and its
origins. C. P. E. Bach was a great innovator, but he was, of
all the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, most true to the unique
genius of his father. A product of his upbringing in the home
of Germany's greatest composer and keyboard virtuoso, his art
bore the stamp of that experience throughout his lifetime.

He tells us in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY that his father was his only

teacher.5 Close examination of his innovations will show that

53

Young Frederick's yearning for approval from his admired
sage was almost painful. In his letters, he addressed Voltaire
almost as apprentice to master, offering his own French verses
apologetically, seeking endorsement. When the burden of king-
ship was forced upon him at the death of his father, Frederick
took up the reins of power reluctantly and sadly and wrote of
the loss of his youthful aspirations.

I was contemplating a little work on metaphysicks; it

has become a work of politicks instead. I had thought

to joust with the amiable Voltaire, and now I have to

fence with Machiavelli. So, my dear Voltaire, we are

not masters of our fate. The whirlwind of circumstance

bears us away, and we must submit to be borne away.

I pray you to see, in me, only a zealous citizen, a

rather doubting philosopher, but a truly faithful

friend.

Frederick's diffidence in his early relationship with Voltaire
demonstrates the insecure self image of German culture at the
beginning of the century. Despite the great cultural heritage
of his own country, Frederick was a Francophile who even
looked down on the German language. By the same token, German
art, literature and drama ignored its own past, and looked
abroad for models at the outset of the century. However, as
German national identity developed, an indigenous culture grew
with it. The greatest, perhaps the only true philosopher of
the century, was Kant, and it was Germany's scientist-writer-
poet, Goethe, who paved the way for the romanticism of the nine-
teenth century. Clearly, Germany had borrowed heavily from
the French and English Enlightenment, yet, when foreign ideol-

ogy became Germanized, it took on the special cast of the

German mind and temperament.

54

in the matter of daring modulations, brilliant and unortho-
dox harmonies, singing melody, and above all, profound ex—
pression, the son remained true to the father, despite the
different direction that his musical style and the changing
historical conditions of his time led him.

In the case of the music, we will find that C. P. E. Bach
"Germanized" the French rococo style in respect to the rather
superficial brilliance and polish to which we have just al-
luded. The PELICAN HISTORY OF MUSIC equates the musical

changes in Bach's empfindsamkeit with cultural change, the

 

same transition from France to Germany of which we speak.

Rococo art itself, however, was insubstantial and
effete: the emotions embodied in the style galant
were so artificial that the ordering of them could
scarcely have presented a serious problem. As we
saw in the case of Stamitz, it was those who sought
to transform this shallow, courtly art into some—
thing more robust, more genuinely human, who came
face to face with problems of form and content.

Now Bach's position was a peculiarly challenging
one. The culture in which he developed was that of
the Empfindsamkeit (i.e., the culture of 'sentiment-
ality', the German equivalent of the French rococo),
and he Spent the larger part of his creative life at
the court of Frederick the Great, where French taste
was paramount. . . As a keyboard musician, Bach was
confronted with the mannered excesses of the Empfind-
samkeit at their most extreme, for the accepted style
of playing reduced melody to a flurry of ornamentation.
In his important Versuch uber die wahre Art das Clavi-
er zu spielen (Essay_on the True art of Playing Key-
board Instruments, 1753), he sought to show that the
expressive aims of the rococo might be better realized
if the music itself were permitted to speak. He ar—
gued the need for discretion in the player's use of
ornaments; at the same time he absorbed the principle
of ornamentation into the substance of his own com-
position.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the case of the aesthetic principle that informs Bach's

empfindsamkeit, we must be careful to delineate the changes

 

55

in French sensibility as it was absorbed into Germany. We
will find that certain writers and poets seized upon the no-
tions of freedom, creative independence and the expression of
subjective emotion as an escape from the choking rigor of
social stratification in eighteenth century Germany. In lit-
erature they found this to be an outlet for the frustrations
that had no revolutionary political outlet as in France. Con—
sequently, frustrations were sublimated into the literary

movement known as sturm und drang, coloring its productions

 

with a rebellious spirit. German writers and poets of this
c1ique--Klopstock, Hamman, Herder, for example, were self-
consciously in pursuit of subjectivity and freedom at the ex-
pense of form. They needed to pour out their innermost feel-
ings in a torrent of cathartic release, so pent up was the
spirit of the German middle-class intelligentsia. It is for
this reason that writers such as Hauser call this self-absorp-
tion an "over-strained subjectivism . . . an artistic subjec-
tivism (that) developed into a mania for originality."7

Yet we must be careful not to take this German preromanti-

cism, the sturm und drang of the latter part of the eighteenth

 

century,as the ideological and aesthetic underpinning of Bach's
Fantasias, despite the centrality they both give to subjecti-
vism, freedom, and originality. The emotional whirlwind of
sturm und drang was too tempestuous for the delicate balance
between emotion and reason that we have found to be a common

concern of the philosophes quoted here and the German composer.

56

Our readings on sensibility have shown that the emerging
aesthetic sought for a naturalism and psychological diversity
that was complemented by the principle of reason and‘emotion
working in concert. Just as we have found Diderot to warn his
actors in A PARADOX ON ACTING against excesses of emotion, we
will find those German writings that lie closest to the aesthet-
ic of Each to reflect a similar caution in the matter of emo-
tional expression. Although German figures exhibit the same
reaction against artificial and contrived forms in traditional
art, we must distinguish this reaction from the nihilism of the
sturm und drang. Moreover, the principle of nature as the model

for art meant something different to the more radical sturm und

 

ggagg movement than to those writers who subscribed to the duality
and balance of Enlightenment thinking.

For the sturm und drang, nature was a mystique, an ideal
world, an escape from the banality and oppressive discipline
of a restrictive society. For other important writers of the
German Enlightenment, we find a notion of nature as the model

for art that is the equivalent of the French philosophes,

 

especially Diderot. We might begin with Goethe.

Although Goethe's writings on realism in the theatre date
slightly later than those of Diderot, we are struck by the
compatibility of their thinking. In his essay, ON TRUTH AND
PROBABILITY IN WORKS OF ART: A DIALOGUE, Goethe, like Dide-
rot, becomes the protagonist for his point of view in a debate
about the issue of realism in art. Arguing with the conser-

vative taste of the spectator at a new opera, Goethe defends

57

the introduction of techniques for realism in this production.
The spectator, accustomed to the artificialities of classical
opera, claims that he "always derived the greatest Satisfac-

tion from it."8

Why, he asks, must the new breed of actor
push himself as one who

expresses feeling most truly, who comes nearest to

the truth in speech, gesture, delivery, and who per-

suades me that I see not an imitation, but the thing

itself?9
The author-narrator answers that art, like nature, must be a
reflection of certain universal truths. However, art seeks
an elusive inner truth, based upon psychological verities.
Ultimately, the purpose of art is to study both man and na-
ture, seeking the mystery of how each one achieves balance.
The more a work of art is based upon this principle of nature
alism, the better it succeeds in its function which

harmonizes with your better nature; because it is

above the natural, but not outside it. A perfect

work of art is a work of the human soul, and, in this

sense, is also a work of nature. But because it gath-

ers together scattered objects, down to the humblest,

in all its significance and worth it is above nature.

It will be comprehensible to a mind that is harmon-

iously formed and developed, one that, according to

its capacities, will seek out what is perfect and com—

plete in itself.10

However, it is to G. E. Lessing, Bach's intimate friend and
colleague that we turn in the matter of the development of aes-
thetic ideas closest to Bach himself. As the respected leader
of the German Enlightenment, Lessing's LAOCOON was certainly
the most important work on aesthetics in the latter half of

the century. It became an important rebuttal to conservative

taste, of which Johann Winckelmann was the spokesman. In it,

58

Lessing attacks not only the dictatorship of rule and formula
in academic circles based on classical models and precepts,
but the deeper issue of expression in art. h

Lessing finds that Wincklemann's interpretation of Greek
sculpture and drama is distorted by his misapprehension that
the Greeks were offended by anything that despoiled the ideal
of beauty, and, thereby, avoided strong emotion. How strange,
says Lessing, that Winckelmann should fail to perceive that

the ancient Greek amphitheatres "rang with the imitation of

11

these tones of rage, pain, and despair." The Greeks were

not choked on the false "courtesy and decency (that) forbid

O 12 o O
cries and tears," as was his generation. Homer's great he-

roes suffered, they raged, and screamed with all the intensi-
ty of their noble character.v

Homer's wounded heroes not infrequently fall with a
cry to the ground. Venus screams aloud at a scratch,
not as being the tender goddess of love, but because
suffering nature will have its rights. Even the iron
Mars, on feeling the lance of Diomedes, bellows as
frightfully as if ten thousand raging warriors were
roaring at once, and fills both armies with terror.

High as Homer exalts his heroes in other respects
above human nature, they yet remain true to it in
their sensitiveness to pain and injuries and in the
expression of their feelings by cries or tears or
revilings. Judged by their deeds they are creatures
of a higher order- in their feelings they are genu-
ine human beings.13

Moreover, Lessing returns to the necessity for suffering,
not only as the ultimate lot of mankind, whether hero or or—
dinary, but because it is the essential ingredient in moving
the spectator in the theatre.

Our sympathy is always proportionate with the suffer-
ing expressed by the object of our interest. If we

59

behold him bearing his misery with magnanimity, our
admiration is excited; but admiration is a cold senti—
ment, wherein barren wonder excludes not only every
warmer emotioni but all vivid personal conception of
the suffering. H

With Lessing, German sensibility takes a new direction.
Lessing rejects beauty as the first principle of art. For
him, as with the moderns, it is expression. This first law
of art binds the artist to such a degree that beauty, where

it is incompatible with expression, "must be at least sec-

ondary to it."15 He says,

I will confine myself wholly to expression. There
are passions and degrees of passion whose expression
produces the most hideous contortions of the face;
and throws the whole body into such unnatural posi-
tions as to destroy all the beautiful lines that mark
it when in a state of greater repose. These passions
the old artists either refrained altogether from re-
presenting, or softened into emotions which were ca-
pable of being eXpressed with some degree of beauty.
Rage and despair disgifured none of their works.
I venfgre to maintain that they never represented a
fury.

Here we find a radical and essentially modern position, one
that seemed revolutionary even 100 years later when Rodin
proclaimed it to be the essence of his art. Perhaps the lat-
ter put it best when he said,
beauty in art is solely expressive truth. He who
foolishly tries to prettify what he sees, masks the
ugliness seen in reality or hides the sadness it
contains, he will truly meet with ugliness in art,
that is, the inexpressive.
Lessing became the prophet in Germany of this essentially
modern aesthetic-~that is, expression as the first law of

art. We have seen how this precept found its roots in the

shift toward the emotions and the passions in sensibility,

60

and the parallel movement toward naturalism, psyhcological
realism, and subjectivity in the arts. With this understand-
ing in mind, we find the essential connection between eight-
eenth century sensibility as outlined in Chapter One and the

empfindsamkeit of C. P. E. Bach.

 

Turning to the aesthetic ideas that inform Bach's musical
principle, we find our best guide to be Diderot, once again;
Despite various writings by German figures on stylistic
changes in music of this period. In particular, we will ex-
amine critical writings on the special confluence between
literature and music to be found in certain of C. P. E. Bach's
instrumental works. However, the theoretical model for the
subtle relationship between reason and emotion, form and free—
dom, originality and technical virtuosity remains best de-
lineated in Diderot's RAMEAU'S NEPHEW. Here we find the
most powerful yet flexible argument for the manner in which
music becomes a vehicle for the articulation of nonverbal
ideas without subscribing wholly to techniques of literature,
which, after all, is not music. Instead, Diderot brilliantly
suggests the interrelationship of mind and sense, reason and
emotion as the means by which music becomes the song without
words.

Recalling the debate between the philosopher and the Neph-
ew on the Italian and French styles, we find that the issue
rests upon the nature and function of melody in music. Both
have agreed that the new music finds its model in nature, and

the philosopher now asks "What is the musician's model when he

61

18

fashions a melody?" To which the Nephew retorts, "What

is a melody?"19
Both parties suggest in their attempt at definition that

melody, like language, remains inexplicable in its origin

and effect. In music, melody suggests rather than specifies

as does poetic metaphor which avoids precise definition.

HE. A melody is a vocal or instrumental imitation
using the sounds of a scale invented by art--or in-
spired by nature, as you prefer; it imitates either
physical noises or the accents of passion. You can
see that by changing a few words in this definition
it would exactly fit painting, eloquence, sculpture
or poetry.

The mechanism through which melody arouses thought and
feeling is similar to the confluence of mind and sensation
as stated in D'ALEMBERT'S DREAM. Both melody, which is sen-
sual, and declamation, which is intellectual, interreact to
set off the chain of events that lead, finally, to those in-
definable truths that can be suggested, but never fully re-
alized.

Now to come to your question. What is the musi-
cian's or the melody's model? It is declamation if

the model is alive and a thinking being; it is phys-

ical noise if the model is inanimate. Consider de-

clamation as one line and song as another, which twists

snakelike about the former. The more the declamation,
which is the prototype of song, is vivid and true,

the more the song shaped upon it will intersect it at

many points. The truer the melody, the more beauti-

ful it will be--and that is what our younger musi-

cians have so well understood.21

We find here that Diderot has not entirely rejected the
idea that recitative should articulate a spoken line. Rather,

he suggests that it is emotion that informs the spoken line

and becomes the point of origin rather than the specific

62

words and meters of the text. In this sense, the musical
line becomes a dramatic utterance similar to the delivery
of dramatic speech in the theatre which depends for its emo-
tional and psychological effect upon the rise and fall of
the voice, the pregnant pauses, the subjective style of de-
livery that catch and involve an audience. The philosopher
says,

You will discover that the melodic line exactly co-

incides with the curve of spoken utterance.

I say nothing of meter, which is another condi-

tion of melody; I dwell on expressiveness.22

Equally as important, the new melodies incorporate vari-
ety and freedom from the rules of French classical recitative
that suit the prerogatives of the new aesthetic which de—
mands that art should reflect the great diversity of human
character. The philosopher says that "One finds in these new
works every type of character, an infinite variety of utter-

23 Here we have a rationalization for the most strik-

ance."
ing innovations to be found in Bach's Fantasias. Whatever
the technique, whether it is abrupt sectionalism, unorthodox
harmony, or starkly defined modulation, we find his underly-
ing purpose to be dramatic contrast. Bach's Fantasias sug-
gest precisely the psychological diversity and the range of
human passions that Diderot has outlined in the musical aes-
thetic to be found in RAMEAU'S NEPHEW.
Having established these theoretical principles and the

influence of the literary and philosophic movement known as

sensibility, we come now to the music of C. P. E. Bach, his

63

empfindsamkeit, or music of sensibility. Here we must shift

 

mental gears, since music is not literature. We are deal-
ing with something less tangible than the writings thus far.
Music speaks in a language all its own, and there are special
analytic tools that are the domain of the professional music-
ologist. However, once we accustom ourselves to the language
of harmonic analysis, we will be richly rewarded in terms of
an entirely new perspective of eighteenth century sensibility.
Here we will find precisely that duality, the wonderful con—
fluence of thought and feeling, form and creative spontaneity
that characterizes sensibility as we have defined it. Peter
Cohen has said that in Bach's music,

All the contrast of the German enlightenment from the

purest rationalism to materialism, from sensualism to

pietism, are all brought together in Bach's work. He

lived in the spirit of synthesis, synthesis between

reason and belief, reason and nature. The rocess of

this fusion is evident in his life's work.2

Like the writers cited here, Bach embraced the principle
that art imitates nature, in respect to his search for forms
in music that were naturalistic rather than contrived and
artificial. Burney tells us that Bach composed easily in
the style of counterpoint, "he was learned beyond his father

25 Yet for

. . . his fugues were always new and curious."
those in the progressive cadres of musical style, counter-
point was "learned" in the pejorative sense that Rousseau
suggested in his DISCOURSES. For Each, as for Diderot,

Rousseau, and Lessing, nature was the ultimate source, the

great teacher of the artist and the musician. It is she who

64

'kfllows the composer an insight into her inexhaustible works,"26

she who is the ultimate source of true genius, an inborn fa-
culty that will not tolerate the boundaries of the formulatic
and the contrived. Following the precepts of nature, the com-
poser must avoid that which is unnatural--that is, "unneces-
sary force, tension, intemperance, chance and shapeless move-

27

ment." His model, on the other hand, is the "brevity,

weightlessness, completeness and spontaneity, ease and smooth-

ness"28

that one finds in nature. Even more, when it comes to
a choice between the unsch8n (the unlovely) of nature or the
gghég (beautiful) that is only artificial, there is no ques-
tion as to which is the course that the true artist follows.
For Bach, as for Lessing, beauty does not lie in the cosmetic
overlay, but in expressive truth.

Although expression in music as a fundamental principle is
as old as the Greeks, it is the nature and quality of expres-
sion that Bach wrestled with in his most radical compositions.
That quality only becomes clear with an understanding of sen-
sibility as we have outlined it here, and Bach's relation-
ship to it. Once we accept him as a man of sensibility in
his deepest heart, the confusion engendered by the "far-
fetched" reaches of his style begins to make sense.

Despite the necessary accomodations to his conservative
milieu and the demands of reason, Bach was in communion with
his deepest sensibilities through his music. Burney describes

his mystical state when he

65

was so obliging as to sit down to his Silbermann Cla-
vichord, and favourite instrument, upon which he played-
three or four of his choicest and most difficult com-
positions, with the delicacy, precision, and spirit
for which he is so justly celebrated among his country-
men. In the pathetic and slow movements, whenever he
had a long note to express, he absolutely contrived
to produce, from his instrument, a cry of sorrow and
complaint, such as can only be effected upon the cla-
vichord, and perhaps by himself.

After dinner, which was elegantly served, and cheer-
fully eaten, I prevailed upon him to sit down again
to a clavichord, and he played, with little intermis—
sion, till near eleven o'clock at night. During this
time, he grew so animated and possessed, that he not
only played, but looked like one inspired. His eyes
were fixed, his under lip fell, and drops of efferves-
cence distilled from his countenance. He said, if he
were to be set to work frequently, in this manner,

-he should grow young again.

 

One can hardly enlarge upon this moving account of the
composer, who, perhaps more so than any other of Bach's sons
inherited his father's theoretical genius, caught in the
throes of frank emotions that, as Lessing said, would have
offended the "courtesy and decency" of the rank and file mu-
sicians of his day. Keeping the ethos of sensibility in mind,
we find the musician to be not so much an offender of accept-
ed tastes,as a prophet, one who prepared the way for the likes
of Beethoven whom George Bernard Shaw described as "the first
man who used music with absolute integrity as the expression
of his own emotional life."30

On one hand, we find C. P. E. Bach's music to reflect
changing tastes; lightness, simplicity, the playful as op-
posed to the labored, the concise as opposed to the ponderous

and complex. Yet we will find Bach's deeper impulse was to

another mandate, to the emerging concept of the individual

 

66

worth of all human beings regardless of status or social

rank. To this impulse he addressed his most daring and radi-
cal excursions. In his search for a voice that would.artic-
ulate the deepest expression of individuals whose concern was
with their own identity rather than that of kings or mytholog-
ical abstractions, C. P. E. Bach devised an important new
principle of expression in music, and this is the principle
which we will define in this chapter.

Keeping a musical principle rather than a particular form
or structure in mind will help us to evaluate Bach's position
both in cultural and in musical history with more precision.
Because of his place in the transitional milieu of the latter
half of the eighteenth century, Bach has been falsely labeled
the father of sonata-form by some musicologists. His posi-
tionvfijflquthe mainstream of music has been seen as transi-
tional and embryonic--one whose innovations were brought to
fruition by the great composers of the classical period.
However, modern research has shown that Bach did not in fact
set down any definitive rules for sonata-form, but was, in-
stead, one of a number of eighteenth~century composers who
experimented with new forms just as his nonmusical colleagues
did.31

Looking at Bach's compositional techniques throughout the

FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER, we find him to be typically experi-

 

mental and flexible in his approach to the form which he
called sonata. Although many sonatas in the collection have

a tripartite scheme with a fast-slow-fast movement, there is

67

no definite scheme for what Bach calls sonatas throughout,
some being binary, and some only one extended section. We
shall not consider Bach as the architect of modern form here,
but as one whose daring innovations in harmony, in dynamics,
and especially in techniques for dramatic contrast became
the model for future composers. His musical aesthetic rath-
er than his musical form becametfluaequivalent of the search
for dramatic and expressive forms in the art and literature
of eighteenth century sensibility.

It is also Bach's place in the transition from an age of
absolutism and aristocratic privilege to a wider based soci-
ety in which an intelligent, educated, and assertive middle
class became the patrons and the audience for music that
interests us here. Using the scores of the Fantasias as
evidence of Bach's stylistic innovations, we must consider
the manner in which stylistic change in music reflects broad—
er social, political, and intellectual changes. For one
thing, we know by its very title FOR CONNOISSEURS AND AMA-
TEURS, that the collection was aimed at a middle-class sub-
scriber who played reasonably well, but was not a virtuoso

32

or professional musician. However, given the generally

conservative mentality, even of the cosmopolitan port city
of Hamburg, we find some contemporary critics to be puzzled
by Bach's radical sounding experiments. Even Burney, who

greatly admired him, found him to be "fantastical and re—

33

cherche" at his extremities, a strange "music for another

34

century." Burney tells us that

68

Em. Bach used to be censured for his extraneous mod-

ulations, crudities, and difficulties; but, like the

hard words of Dr. Johnson, to which the public by de-

grees became reconciled, every German composer takes

the same liberties now as Bach. ”

Bach's own reply to these criticisms was that his critics
spoke from "not knowing the circumstances that gave them
birth, or remembering the author's original intent."36 It
is to these circumstances, and to his "intent," that is, to
pursue expressive truth above all in his music, that we must
give our attention as we examine these scores.

My method has been adapted to my purpose-~that is, to
show the manner in which Bach articulated an eighteenth cen-
tury theory of the passions in his Fantasias. I am not in-
terested in his harmonic vocabulary as it conforms to or
deviates from accepted harmonic usage, but rather, its ef-
fect upon the auditory senses and the emotions of the listen-
er, the manner in which it reflects shifting and volatile
passions. Our purpose here is to consider how Bach put the
theoretical substance of sensibility into music, to consider
his musical theories, and to evaluate their effectiveness.
What we are looking for are techniques that Bach devised for
immediacy and subjectivity of expression, for music as a mir-
ror of the twofold nature of the psyche--the rational and
orderly, and the inchoate and impulsive.

Innovation, of course, demands by its very nature that
the composer push toward the edges of form, so that the for-

mulatic gives way to the unconventional that serves dramatic

purpose. Looking at Bach's musical principle as an

69

articulation of certain intellectual and aesthetic ideas cur-
rent in his century, it is not form, but an insistent origi-
nality that stems from an impulse toward freedom that ex-
plains his eccentricities. Bach's principle, if it could

be given a nomenclature at all, might be called a principle
of contrast in music. It is his approximation of the heaving
and restless nature of the passions, expressed in the con-
trasting sections, the rhythmic changes, the sudden jarring
modulations or key changes, the shift from major to minor,
the strange and unprecedented intervals found in his most

rhetorical empfindsamer passages. In the style we find a

 

musical equivalent of changing moods, of the natural dis-
placement of one emotion by another within the complex world
of the subjective being. It is a language only to be under-
stood in terms of its affekte (Bach's term), one that puts
the listener exquisitely on edge. With it, he creates a delib-
erate sense of unrest, what Philip Barford in his study, THE
KEYBOARD MUSIC OF C. P. E. BACH, has called a

disturbing apprehension of psycho-tonal polarity,

a sense of subjective upheaval and dislocation of

centre which is correlative with, and seems to ad-

just itself spontaneously to fundamental deviations

in the direction of the tonal flow . . 7

Using the freely-composed Fantasia form, Bach could be his
most experimental and unorthodox, adapting harmonic devices
such as chord usage and modulation to the dramatic and pur-
posefully emotive nature of the music. Wishing to set his

listener on edge, he wants to sharpen rather than soften con-

trasts, to play on ambiguity and ambivalence rather than

70

order and stability. Therefore, we should not merely look
for the manner in which Bach eschews conventional chord pro-
gressions or modulating patterns, but the tonal and psycholog-
ical effect of the music, the sense that it conveys of uncer-
tainty and tentativeness, a mind that must search in some
agonizing way until it finds rest and peace.

Toward this end, Bach relied heavily on the deceptive ca-
dence, on startling key changes, on the ambiguous sound of
minor thirds, on the tentative nature of the diminished sev-
enth chord which can move to any one of three subsequent keys,
on jarring rhythmic and harmonic changes. Most striking,
perhaps, is the manner in which Bach introduces early in the
work a diminished seventh chord which becomes a kind of pivot
point. Rather than acting as a modulating mechanism, or a
dynamic construction in a chordal scheme, this dark and am-
biguous chord serves a dramatic rather than schematic purpose.
Its function is juxtapositional, not logical, and it under-
scores the nature of the emotions--often contradictory and
opposite, rather than orderly and logical. It becomes what
Barford called "the tonal essence (in) a series of subjectively
experienced sounds unaffected by harmonic explanations."38

While harmonic devices are the substance of music, we are
also interested in examining the crosscurrents between the
music and the literature and drama of eighteenthwcentury
sensibility. The uniquely rhetorical nature of Bach's ETE-

findsamkeit is equally important to his musical principle as

71

a key element in the style,and as evidence of his belief in
the correspondence between literature and music. The manner
in which Bach's rhetorical phrasing and style differed from
baroque musical rhetoric, and the way that he adapted a vo-
cal style and a sense of dialogue to the keyboard should be
examined here as well.

The confluence of the two is hardly a new phenomenon in
music history. As far back as classical antiquity, Plato
had written that music is the servant to the text, and not
vice versa, "rhythm and harmony are regulated by the words,

39 However, the special

and not the words by themselves."
relationship between spoken, written, and musical language
took on a cast of its own in the eighteenth century. The‘
question now was not merely the correspondence between lit—
erature and music, but the ancient connection between the
means of articulation and the passions. In Rousseau's wri-
tings on music, he connects the primacy of the passions with
the evolution of both language and music.

Passion arouses the entire vocal equipment to speech

and endows the voice with all its ower. Thus, verse,

song, speech has a common origin.
This mutuality was an important current in the stream of late
eighteenth century aesthetic thought, and certainly influenced
the "cross-fertilization of (a) literary and musical aesthet-

41 amongst the intellectual circle close to C. P. E. Bach.

icll
“Considering his relationship to the great literary figures
of Germany at the time-~G. E. Lessing, Moses Mendehlsohn,

Klopstock, to mention only a few-~it is not surprising that

72

Bach experimented with melding literature and music. In 1751
he published a piece entitled SANQUINEUS UND CHOLERICUS‘}2
with introductory notes that outlined his intention to bridge
the gap between the two media. Although it was a trio sonata
for strings and keyboard, this work warrants our attention in
respect to Bach's express intention to approximate musically

a dialogue between two clearly defined characters--one cheer-

43 The piece caught the imagination of

ful, one melancholy.
Bach's literary friends, especially the poet Gerstenberg, who
eagerly grasped the rhetorical nature of Bach's style as the
means by which the barriers between literature and music
would be overcome. However, even Bach's strong supporters
found the experiment to be too contrived. Burney wrote that
it was a compromise of his "powers of invention, melody, and
modulation . . . the opinions of the disputants remained as.
obscure as the warbling of larks and linnets."44
Bach. himself. recognized that he had overstepped his
boundaries, straining too hard to impart a literary dimension
to an instrumental work. In a letter to his friend, Gersten—
berg, Bach wrote that "as long as we have that which is near,
we can ignore that which is far away without depriving our-

"45 In other words, the musician has a powerfully rhe-

selves.
torical mode of expression at hand, but its expressive power
lies in freedom from the specificity of language. Music

speaks without words, reaching that primal level of which Rous-

seau had spoken, touching the mind and the emotions simultane-

ously. It conveys both abstract ideas and emotions at the

73

same time, and its power lieSiJlitS ability to achieve both
immediacy and distance.

Our concern here, however, is with the Fantasia, and
here we have another example of Bach's strong literary affin-
ities, the consciousness of his close-knit group of friends
of the literary potential of music. Bach's FREE FANTASY
IN C MINOR, written to illustrate the principles for free
improvisation given in the VERSUCH, became another experiment
in the synthesis of literary and musical forms.

In this case, it was a poet, and not the composer, who
conceived the experiment. Obsessed with the idea that poetry
and music verge on the brink of a common mode of tonal and
verbal expression, Wilhelm Von Gerstenberg wrote

that I should like to have your opinion . . . I point
out first that music without words expresses only
general ideas, and that the insertion of words brings
out its full meaning; second, the experiment is 1i-
mited to only those instrumental movements in which
the expression is very clear and explicit. On this
basis I have underlaid a kind of text to some Bach
clavier pieces which were obviously never intended

to involve a singing voice, and Klopstock and every-
body have told me that these would be the most ex-
pressive pieces that could be heard. Under the fan—
tasy in the sixth sonata, for instance, which he com-
posed as an example for his VERSUCH, I put Hamlet's
monologue as he fantasizes on life and death . . . a
kind of middle condition of his shuddering soul as
conveyed . . . Yet I freely admit that one should

not extend this experiment too far, since some in—
strumental movements, though full of feeling, can

by no means be sung . . .4

Actually, Gerstenberg went further than merely adapting
Shakespeare's great soliloquy to a musical score. Borrowing
heavily from the romantic overtones of sturm und drang liter-

ature, he changed Hamlet's dark and mysterious apprehension

74

of death as "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no
travellor returns,"4io a feverish rhapsody on a sublime world
of reunion with loved ones, an ecstatic peace of soul.48
Although he was relatively faithful to the musical score,
changing only a few notes to match the dialogue, Gerstenberg
violated the principle of nonspecificity in music just a1-
1uded to. The piece, published by Cramer in the year 1787,
two years before the composer's death, was hailed by some as
a "divining rod for discovering many deep veins of gold in
the secret mines of music, in that it demonstrates in itself
what can result from this dithyrambic union of instrumental
and vocal music . . ."49 But Bach himself remained re-
served, on the same grounds already mentioned. The musician
is not a writer, and, although we may say that music has the
potential for expression of lofty ideas, its uniqueness lies
in the fact that it is the only medium through which the
artist speaks without words.

Here again we have a key to Bach's conception of the
rhetorical nature of his music. Although politely tolerant
of Gerstenberg's adaptation, Bach says that

in fact one can say a great deal on our instrument

with a good performance. I do not include here a

mere tickling of the ears, and I insist that the

heart must be moved. Such a keyboard player, es-

pecially when he has a highly inventive spirit, can
do very much. Meanwhile, words remain always words.

50
His real contribution to music as dramatic dialogue was not
to‘be in programmatic innovations, but in the creation of a

musical principle that transferred to an instrument the

75

impulses, the syntax, the rising and falling, and above all,
the expressiveness of speech.

Here, then, is the real affect that Bach's music had on
his own generation and those who followed. Although he con-

tinually says that the higher purpose of music is to "touch

the heart,"51 one finds something more substantial worked

out in his more daring and exploratory pieces. It is what
Eugene Helm, a leading C. P. E. Bach scholar, calls

the unparalleled importance that he gave to what

has been called the redende principle, or principle
of expressive musical discourse for instruments, the
style that made instruments act out the rapid chang-
es of human emotion, that caused the speechless cla-
vichord to speak.5

The centrality of this rhetorical style to the Fantasias,
and its relationship to the theory of sharply contrasted emo-
tions is given to us by Bach himself in the VERSUCH.

As stated earlier, it is especially in fantasias,
those expressive not of memorized or plagiarized
passages, but rather of true, musical creativeness,
that the keyboardist more than any other executant
can practice the declamatorygstyle, and more auda-
ciously from one affect to another.

 

The key to understanding the specific meaning that declam-
atory style has here, for Bach, come in its connection with
the special duality of reason and emotion. We have already
seen that Diderot and Rousseau found the declamatory style
of French recitative to be formal and stilted. Its artifi—
ciality in this respect offended the new taste for naturalism.
Ceftain rules were given to ensure that the musical phrase
would transmit the particular spoken message of the text, or,

in the words of LeBrun, "expose and develop a dramatic

76

situation."54 For the most part, this text was taken from
the French classical drama, especially the plays of Racine.
Symmetry, and the formulatic as opposed to the spontaneous
were the guiding principles of this style of declamation.

The musical accents were expected to fall on the same syl—
lables of the spoken text in the theatre-~generally the first
beat of the measure. In Diderot's ENCYCLOPEDIA, the rule was
given that

the recitative has neither a uniform rhythm nor me-

lody, it is ruled exclusively by the caesura and the

text phrases.5

For Bach, as for Diderot, the purpose of declamatory style
was to deepen and intensify the expressive content of the
piece, to sharpen contrasts, and allow the performer an in-
terpretive liberty in the phrasing based upon his intuitive
understanding of the music. The long-term ramifications of
declamation taken in this sense, cannot be exaggerated.

For Bach, the ultimate purpose of good performance was to
convey, through expression, the deeper meaning of the music.
He constantly advises the performer that he must engage his
audience.

It can be seen from the many affects which music

portrays, that the accomplished musician must have

special endowments and be capable of employing them

wisely. He must carefully apprise his audience,

their attitude toward the expressive content of his

program, ghe place itself, and other additional
factors.5

Moreover, the performer is a vital link in the three-way re-
lationship between music, performer, and listener, a catalyt-

ic agent in the activation of emotion.

77

A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved.
He must of necessity feel all of the affects that

he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the reveal-
ing of his own humor will stimulate a like humor in
the listener. In languishing, sad passages, the per-
former must languish and grow sad.5

Bach has been called part of the "agonized expression"58
school of playing, because of his insistence on a sweeping in-
volvement that engages the musician completely.

Those who maintain that all of this can be accom-

plished without gesture will retract their words

when, owing to their own insensibility, they find

themselves obliged to sit like a statue before their

instrument. Ugly grimaces are, of course, inappro-

priate and harmful; but fitting expressions help the

listener to understand our meaning.
Physical involvement, a key factor in sensibility, is not for
overt dramatic effect. Rather, when expression and meaning
are complementary, they will, in Bach's words, "bring out the
contenthfltf the work. However, feeling and meaning always
work in concert, and the Fantasias allow optimal conditions
for this mutuality.

It is principally in improvisations or fantasias

that the keyboargist can best master the feelings

of his audience.
In Bach's Fantasias, we have the dialectic experience, feeling
and understanding that activate and reveal the higher truths
of art and nature.

Unlike the French declamation, or the operatic aria, how-
ever, these truths do not become articulated in specific
words, nor do they express definitive ideas. As we have a1-

réhdy noted, the great power of music is that it suggests,

rather than delineates, that it allows the listener to color

78

the meaning via the palette of his own imagination. It is a
language of feeling and intuition combined that leads rather
than directs.

An understanding of this meeting of expression and thought
in Bach's musical principle is invaluable to the modern per-
former. Much of the study of authentic performance practice
of eighteenth-century music deals with technical matters of
bowing, articulation, and pitch. However, we have no way of
knowing how this music was actually performed in terms of the
dynamics, phrasing, and above all the expressive content.
Many modern performers incorrectly assume that baroque music
was performed with less emotional involvement, and with more
restraint. Only through an understanding of the expressive
purpose of music, as outlined by Bach, can we come Closer to

the truth of the matter.

Bach knew what all musicians, regardless of time or place,
know--that great music is a matter of deep personal involvement
on every level. He hated, above all, facile virtuosity,

technicians, nimble keyboardists by profession, who
possess all of these qualifications and indeed as-
tound us with their prowess without ever touching
our sensibilities. They overwhelm our hearing with-
out satisfying it and stun the mind without moving

it.
The true musician must

sway in gentle undulation the ear rather than the
eye, the heart rather than the ear, and lead it
'1 where they will.

Bach emphasized that it is in the musical touch of the key—

boardist--the manner in which he produced a "rounded, pure

79

flowing manner of playing which makes for Clarity and expres-

"64 "65 is brought

siveness, that "the true content of a piece
out. Musical taste should avoid a percussive attack that
would only obscure a "more musical way of portraying rage,
anger, and other passions."66
Stressing singing tone and the emulation of good singing
as the model for the keyboardist of musicality and taste,
Bach warned against the mechanical cancelling out of the
spontaneous and emotional; "freedom of performance rules out
everything that is slavish. Play from the soul, not like a

trained bird."67

Performance must be an emotional experience
in which the performer joins his audience in a community of
feeling.

In the next chapter, we will examine in detail the manner
in which Bach put all of these theories into practice in
‘the FANTASIA IN Eb MAJOR. Here we will see the musical
principle in action. However, we might conclude this chap-
ter by asserting once more that the techniques for expression
and declamation that Bach has given us in his musical prin-
ciple are the best guide to musical performance and correct
practice, in any age. Considering music as "the meeting place

68 each performer

between the intellectual and the sensual,"
must find where that delicate balance lies. As we know from
Burney, Bach was not afraid to enter into a deep emotional
inyolvement, adopting certain physical attitudes and postures,

with beads of sweat running down his brow. For modern per-

formers, this may certainly be inappropriate, but the

80

incredible pressures for technical virtuosity and accuracy
should not override Bach's two principle elements of good
performance-~expression and meaning. Remembering Bach's
approach to keyboard music as song without words, the artist
can decide on matters of phrasing, tempo, and musical line
with the freedom that comes from individual interpretation,
with the understanding that comes from intuition of what the
music means. Only then, in the words of Bach, will he "play

"69 melding rea-

from the soul, and not like a trained bird,
son and emotion, the twin poles of eighteenth century sen-

sibility.

FOOTNOTES

Chapter Two

 

l'Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, ESSAY ON THE TRUE ART OF
PLAYING KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS, translatedamuiedited by Wil-
liam J. Mitchell, Eulenberg Books, London, 1974: P- 1-

2'Diderot, Denis, RAMEAU'S NEPHEW AND OTHER WORKS, trans-
lated by Jacques Barzun and Ralph H. Bowen, Bobbs-Merrill
Co., Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana and New York, p. 65.

3“Hauser, Arnold, THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART, VOLUME III,
Vintage Books, New York, p. 117.

4'Ridgway, R. S., VOLTAIRE AND SENSIBILITY, McGill-Queen's
University Press, Montreal and London, 1973, p. 11. This
quote, as in all other quotes from Ridgway were given in
French, and they are my translations.

5'Newman, William, EMANUEL BACH'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, transla+~
tion and introduction, THE MUSICAL QUARTERLY, p. 372.

6'Hampson, Norman, THE PELICAN HISTORY OF MUSIC, Penguin
Books, Baltimore, Maryland, 1968, pp. 56-57.

7’op. cit., Hauser, p. 114.

8'Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, ON TRUTH AND PROBABILITY IN
WORKS OF ART, from John Gage, GOETHE ON ART, University of
California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980, p. 27.

9'ibid., p. 25.

10'ibid., p. 29.

ll'Lessing, G. E., LAOCOON, from ElizabethG. Holt, ed., A
DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF ART, VOLUME II, Doubleday Books,
Garden City, New York, 1958, p. 353.

12'ibid., p. 354.

13'ibid., p. 354.

14idbid., p. 355.

15'ibid., p. 357.

16'ibid., p. 358.

81

82

l7'Jainou, Ionel, RODIN, translated by Kathleen Muston and
Geoffrey Skelding, ARTED, Editions d'Art, Paris, 1971,
p. 20.

18'Op. Cit, Diderot, RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, p. 62. t

19'ibid., p. 62.

20'ibid., p. 63.

21'ibid., p. 63.

22'ibid., p. 63.

23°ibid., p. 63.

24“Cohen, Peter, THEORIE UND PRAXIS DER CLAVIERASTHETIK, CARL
PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH, Verlag der musikalien Handlung, Karl
Dieter Wagner, Hamburg, Germany, 1974, p. These quotes
are from my own translation of Cohen's text, which has not
been translated into English.

25'Burney, Charles, A GENERAL HISTORY OF MUSIC, VOLUME I,
London, 1789, p. 229.

26

 

 

'op. cit., Cohen, p. 19.

27'ibid., p. 20.

28'ibid., p. 21.

29'op. cit., Burney, p. 230.

3O'Lang, Paul Henry, ed., THE CREATIVE WORLD OF BEETHOVEN,
W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., New York, 1970, p. 62.

31'In fact, the term sonata-form did not come into usage un-
til the nineteenth century, and the concept itself was both
embryonic and open during this developmental period. Essen-
tially, it meant nothing more than its literal translation--
that is, a piece to be played and to be sounded (from sonore)
instrumentally, rather than (vocare), a piece to be sung.
Many different composers experimented with the form during
the century, all of them using different formal schemes. How-
ever, in general, these early "sonatas" tended to be lighter
in nature than the mature form in which the composer was more
aware of the spiritual and philosophical potential inherent
in thematic development. Some were binary in form, or in

two sections, while others were beginning to approximate the
ternary form, or three sectioned A-B-A form as we know it
today. Some were even no more than a self-contained singular
section that might be played alternatively with another con-
trasting one-movement "sonata."

83

32'The original manuscript edition of FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER
are in the rare music library at the University of Michigan.

I was able to look at them and found an interesting list of
subscribers. Although a detailed study of that list would be
subject for another paper, I found that editions were purchased
by certain notable members of the middle-class intelligentsia
in Hamburg and Berlin, as well as the great supporter of music,
Baron Von Swietnan.

33'Glover, Cedric Howard, ed., DR. CHARLES BURNEY'S CONTINEN-
TAL TRAVELS 1770-1772, Blackie and Son, Ltd., London and Glas-
gow, 1927. p. 239.

34

 

'ibid., p. 242.

35'Helm, Eugene, THE HAMLET FANTASIA AND THE LITERARY ELEMENT
IN C. P. E. BACH'S MUSIC, from THE MUSICAL QUARTERLY, VOLUME
58 #2, April, 1972, p. 292.

36'ibid., p. 291.

37'Barford, Philip, THE KEYBOARD MUSIC OF C. P. E. BACH, Con-
sidered in Relation to His Musical Aesthetic and the Rise of
the Sonata Principle, Barrie and Rockliff, London, 1965

38'ibid., p. 39.

39’ibid., p. 15.

4°‘ibid., p. 16.

4l'ibid., p. 17.

42'ibid., p. 19.

43'SANGUINEUS UND CHOLERICUS did not succeed in its purpose.
Nonetheless, it remains an important piece, both musically and
historically. In respect to the latter, it is one of the most
obvious examples of the correspondence between literature and
music in the eighteenth century. Rather than dying out for
lack of success, this partnership was extended with great sub-
tlety and profound expressiveness by other composers close to
Bach, and well into the nineteenth century. One need only
listen to the tender dialogue between viola and violin in the

Antante of Mozart's SYMPHQNIA CONCERTANTE IN Eb MAJOR K364,
to know that the Idea of Instrumental dialogue was not aban-

doned. If anything, it was refined, and its purpose, the
suggestion of exchange between two characters or types, sub-
stantiated. Beethoven too, used it in respect to the clearly
programmatic nature of the beautiful LES ADIEUX sonata, and
particularly in a remarkable exchange between bass and treble
on the keyboard in the Andante of his FOURTH PIANO CONCERTO.

 

84

44'Burney, Charles, A GENERAL HISTORY OF MUSIC, VOLUME I,
London, 1789, p. 992.

45“op. cit., Helm, p. 291.

46'ibid., p. 279.

47'ibid., p. 286.

48'ibid., p. 287, from Cramer, FLORA, pp. XII-XIV.

49'ibid., p. 291, from a letter transcribed by Ernst Bucken,
ed., MUSIKER-BRIEFE, Leipzig, 1940, pp. 709.

50

 

.ibido' p. 295'

51'Op. cit., AUTOBIOGRAPHY, p. 372.

52'op. cit., Helm, p. 295.

53'op. cit., Bach, ESSAY, p. 291.

54'Anthony', James R.,FRENCH BAROQUE MUSIC FROM BEAUJOYEULX
TO RAMEAU, W. W. Norton and Co., New York, London, 1978,
p. 80.

55'ibid., p. 81.

56'op. cit., Bach, ESSAY, p. 153.

57'ibid., p. 152.

58’op. cit., Barford, p. 31.

59'op. cit., Bach, ESSAY, p. 152.
60'ibid., p. 152-

61'ibid., p. 147.

62'ibid., p. 147.

63’ibid., p. 148.

64'ihid., p. 148.

65'ibid., p. 149.

66.

ibido' p0 150'

67'ibia., p. 150.

85

68'Sullivan, J. W. N., BEETHOVEN, HIS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT,
Vintage Books, New York, 1970, p. 4.

69'op. cit., Bach, ESSAY, p. 150.

CHAPTER THREE
THE E FLAT MAJOR FANTASIA

A sketch is generally more spirited than a picture.

It is the artist's work when he is full of inspira;

tion and ardour, when reflection has toned down

nothing. It is tpe artist's soul expressing itself

freely on canvas. Diderot, ESSAY ON PAINTING

‘The Fantasia in Eb major from the 1783 edition of the
FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER, might well be taken as an example
in music of such a work of art. In this work, and its com-
~'panion piece, the Fantasia in A major, we find Bach to be at
the outer edge of musical form with Spontaneity, brevity,
quickness of line, the suggestive as Opposed to the detailed
and specific defining the character of the piece. In these
'w0rks,wnuxmafreedom from harmonic and structural convention
invite composer and performer to exercise their respective
creative and improvisational ideas, we have the sense of a
rapidly and freely executed sketch as Opposed to the longer,
more intricate and polished keyboard works in other genres.

In these two fantasias, the overriding principle of con-
trast and turbulence is subtle, yet pervasive. One can hard-
ly assign a technical term for the manner in which Bach accen-
tuates change in these pieces--either Of tonal mood, or of
style. That is to say that we find running scale passages,
interrupted by alternating 16th notes, followed by highly
rhetorical recitative-type passages, followed by an outburst
of abstract, chromatic runs, to mention only a few. Motivic
elements take shape in the most subtle fashion, fall away,

then reemerge in another section, almost as conscious thoughts

will formulate themselves, submerge for a time into the

86

87
subconscious, and reappear as subliminal mechanisms release
them. Here, we find an eccentricity, an insistence upon
form and shape that suits the nonconformist. Despite the
fact that we find Each to be a master theorist in these
works, there is less of formula and rule, of system and con-
tinuity than of an almost mannered distortion that reflects
Bach's insistent search for creative freedom. In the delib-
erate, section by section contrast, we find in this music
what Arnold Hauser found in German preromanticism in the
latter half of the eighteenth century;

they made the atomized structure Of their world-

view and the fragmentary nature of their motifs

symbols of life Itself.

In these two works, more so than any other of the FUR KENNER
UND LIEBHABER fantasias, Each has informed the music with
Diderot's "exquisite feeling"3' in a fragmentary style that
lacks a long musical line, yet retains overall unity, so that
spontaneous creation and finished form meld themselves with-
in the architecture of the piece.

Looking at the overall architecture Of the Eb major
Fantasia, which has been selected for analysis here, we find
the piece to have two outer sections that mirror one another
which we will refer to here as A1 and A2. A middle section,
completely different in mood and writing, will be called the
B section. However, the larger A sections also break down
into a similar, three-part form, and, for this, we will use
the designations a1, b, and a2. Thus, the tripartite struc-

ture of the first section marked Allegro di molto, reflects

the larger scheme of the piece taken in its entirety. Also,

88
in the absence of bar lines, another indication of the com-
poser's wish to allow interpretive freedom4', we will pro-
ceed by line rather than by measure. Our purpose here is to
show the manner in which this work has a markedly sectional
character, so that it is section rather than measure which
is important. In fact, Bach's demarcation by mood and style
in these sections, rather than by formal introduction, de-

veIOpment, and recapitulation, reinforces the essence of the

style which is freedom and form merged together.

SECTION A1

 

The a1 section, which comprises the first five lines,
Opens with a clear and straightforward statement of the
tonic chord in arpeggiated form. Although Barford makes
much of this arpeggiation, it is the statement of the tonic
rather than the breaking up of the chord, despite its poten—
tial for sensitive interpretation, which is important.
Throughout the piece, it is the manner in which Bach con-
trasts the brightness of the tonic chord with the darker and
slightly ominous sound of a second chord in which the tOp Eb
has been lowered a step to a Db, creating both a minor third
on the tOp and a diminished seventh chord, that creates the
affekg. For clarity of reference, we will assign the letter

A to the tonic chord Spelled as follows: Eb—G—Bb-Eb; and B

to the diminished chord, as follows: Eb—G-Bb—Db.
Following a repeat of chord A, Bach begins what seems to
be'a freely running toccata-like figure that explores the

tonic key. However, what we find here is a clear example of

the manner in which Bach subtly and elusively introduces a

 

89

motivic fragment, that, simple as it is, will become an im-
portant mechanism for both variety and unity. This motivic
fragment is nothing more than a two-note half step pattern,
i.e., D-Eb, F#-G, A-Bb, yet it is distinctive for a number of
reasons. Incongruous as it may seem, this fragment impresses
itself upon the ear, so that when it reappears, it becomes a
mechanism for restatement of the Opening line, a kind of re-
capitulation. Moreover, if one recognizes its motivic func-
tion, then the accidentals within this free—sounding run are
not meant for exploration of a new key, but typical of the way

in which Bach uses intervals for both aural effect and motiv-

ic variation.

Allegro di molto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We shall find this simple motive to be important in the over-
all scheme of the work, as our analysis progresses.

This descending line ends in a restatement of the tonic,
an Eb major chord, whose brightness is immediately disturbed
by the first appearance of the B chord, our ominous diminished
seventh. Repeating this chord six times in a row, although

b at the bottom,

sometimes disguised in an inversion with the D
we have the better part of line two taken up with the tenta-

tive sound of minor thirds.

90

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The effect, of course, is to underscore the contrast between
major and minor mode.

Continuing to stress this major-minor contrast, Bach re-
turns not only to Eb major in the next sequence, but also to

the original two-note motive.
m E
:242422 4 i :' ".==

He continues in this frame until a new surprise is intro-

 

duced--a sudden shift to F major, following an Eb octave.
NOw, in line three, Bach inserts an ascending line of six-
teenth notes alternated in intervals of the diminished third,
a sound which we now come to recognize as an important sty—
listic mechanism for Bach, with its haunting, unstable effect

on the senses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

91

This passage ends with a firmata--the dramatic potential

of silence, and now another statement of the B chord, but

this time built on the root of F, and spelled F-Ab-Cb—D.

Bach repeats this chord three times, but with the final

statement shorn of the bottom Ab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once again, he has presented us with a segment in which the
diminished sound, the instability of this chord, is impressed
upon us, so that the chord stands on its own as a dramatic
device rather than part of any harmonic scheme.

Following another firmata, Bach returns to a major key,
but this time Bb major, and a return of our original motive,
b

giving a recapitulation of the Opening, one more taste of B

major, and then a final rest on the Eb major chord.

 

)
‘1‘!
it

1|.
H
‘I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘\
Q
1':
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r
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‘57
g
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A1 A
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A'II A'l
v _. y . II
7133‘ r -

Thus, an important feature of the A section of the fanta-
sia comes from the contrast between major and minor, from the

psychological effect of stability and certainty suggested by

92
those passages in the tonic key and its related key, Bb major,
with the uncertain, strained and tense sound of the diminished
thirds and Bach's special usage of the diminished seventh
chord.

Following a long rest, we have a link acting as interme-
diary betweenz} and b sections, yet interesting on its own.
For one thing, it is written in octaves--a spacing that Bach
uses more and more in later fantasias of the collection, and
an indication that these works were written with the tonal
potential of the pianoforte in mind.5' However, the strik-

ing feature of this link is its completely abstract quality.

 

 

 

 

 

191‘); E "F. F a _,_-
'w—r-u am my l 'W-“--
-... ab ulmlm .

v r: ; r-’- m4; . r“ ran-1;: -.

V =2 . ‘l 'u

,x .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A A L
Y . v
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A
X
c

I'

While we can see that this A section, despite its rhapso-
dic quality, is clearly a work of craftsmanship as well, this
link has the effect of a musical stream of consciousness.
Here, we have no key reference at all, the accidentals fal-
ling at random in a rush of spontaneity. What we shall find,
is that this becomes a stylistic feature of the fantasia,
in that Bach adOpts a kind of musical abandon at his endings.
One almost feels that he has thrown off his harmonic cloth-
ing in a final act of self-assertion, exposing his subjective
self. Nonetheless, we should take note that the link ends

on Db, a note that is taken up in the following section.

93

SECTION b
Following a long pause, we come to the b section, one that

I will call Bach's empfindsamer whenever we encounter this

 

particular kind of writing. By empfindsamer I am refer-

 

ring to Bach's musical and creative signature. In this
strangely truncated, recitative passage, we have the es-
sence of a fragmentary and eccentric style that is unique
to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and to the aesthetic notions
that underlie sensibility. What we do not find here is
melodic statement that lends itself to develOpment or to an
ongoing musical line of any length. In fact, this pungent
statement of the composer's innermost feelings, another

element always to be found in empfindsamer passages, lasts

 

for little better than one line. However, it is in this
truncated statement that Bach presents the searching, ago-
nizing soul of the man of deep sensibility. It is here that
the music becomes a dramatic monologue that rises to a pitch
of uncertainty, fading off to a final gasp, represented here
by a sudden shift to C major, and a single three—note phrase.
One cannot explain this most eccentric writing in terms
of any conventional analytic method. The Opening fragment,

with its musing quality sets the tone.

 

 

 

to a series of triplets that end in a whole note sounded

against a quarter in which the interval of a fifth in the

94
treble suggests a musing or searching rhetoric. The bass
line adds to the tension with its deliberate chromatic des—
cent, and the special dissonance it sets up. One can only
approach this passage with an empathy and an intuitive sense
as to its expressive quality. As far as its structure is
concerned, the essence of this writing seems to lie in the

jarring intervals, such as augmented fourths,F-Db, Ab-D or

augmented thirds, A—Db, A-F#, the dissonances set up by the
bass line. Once again, we find that it is a motive based
upon unusual intervals,as in the Opening, rather than a
melodic line, that characterizes the piece.

Finally, it trails off into an ascending figure, ending

with a shift to C major, then suddenly a simple three-note

figure that goes nowhere.

 

Suddenly, Bach takes up a running, highly chromatic figure

set against a step-wise bass line

 

 

95

 

 

 

 

 

 

which trails off into another segment of widely spaced inter-
vals, E to C#, almost a cry, and resolving itself in the E
natural and G, the dominant of C major.6'

This is followed by an arpeggiated section that is left

up to the performer to improvise in the manner of figured

bass, a practice that by this time in the century was infre-

‘quently used.7‘ However, the chordal prOgression is implied

by the code given, with chordal numbers. Bach clearly in-
tends that it should remain within the dramatic scheme al-
ready established, and suggested in his passage on figured

bass in the VERSUCH

g

.m— I
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sun.
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In.
In.
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IL

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arpc'ggt'o 15
¢

 

 

 

 

w
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SECTION'a2

Following this improvisational section, we have the return

. l . . .
to-section a although not in the original key. It begins
With the dominant of C major, a G octave, and plays with an

exploratory modulation that combines modulation with the

96

return of the original two—note motive,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After some harshly dissonant statements, the run has come to
rest, not in the original key, but in A minor, bringing sec—
tion A1 to a close.

What we have seen in this A section of the Fantasia in Eb
major is a brilliant working out of the principles for free-
dom within structure that Bach laid out in his chapter on
improvisation in the VERSUCH. Although it is written entire-
ly without bar lines, the tempo is suggested both in the
allegro molto marking and in the musical notation itself.

The contrast between major and minor that is intrinsic to the

97

effect of the section also subscribes to Bach's own warning
that the principle key must not be left too quickly at the
beginning——at the start, the principle key must prevail for
some time so that the listener will be unmistakably oriented.8'

At the same time, he has explored free modulations, as in-
trinsic to fantasia form.

In a free fantasia modulations may be made too close-

ly related, remote, and all other keys. Strange and

profuse modulations are not recommended in pieces

performed in strict measure, but a fantasia with ex-

cursions only to the next related key, would sound

too plain.9'
We should recall here, the abrupt shift to C major, relative
of A minor, following the empfindsamer section, as our most
Obvious example in A1.

However, A1 has a reserve and caution about its tonality._
As a work of art generally proceeds from the subtle and under-
stated, gradually building to more drama, more intensity and
excitement, Bach's fantasias work their way gradually to the
more distant modulations, in their beginnings,following Bach's
step—wise progressions

From a major key the acknowledged closely related keys

are on the fifth degree with a major third and on the

sixth with a minor third. And from minor keys modu-

lation is made chiefly to the third degree with a

major third, and the fifth with a minor third. But

the remote keys in major are on the second and third

degrees, both containing minor triads, and on the

fourth with a major triad.10-

It is not’in this first section, but in A2 that the compo-
ser will throw Off reserve, giving us a wild outburst of

tonal freedom before returning to the original key in the

closing. In A2 we will find that although

98

the remaining keys are the most distant; any of them

may be included in a free fantasia even though they

stand in varying distances from the tonal center.1 '

We have also seen again with somewhat more caution here
than in the ensuing sections, the use of the leading tone as
a lever for modulation,

It suffices if the leading tone (semitonium modi)

of the various keys lies in the bass or some other

part, for this tone is the token and pivot of all

natural modulationlz-
and the many deceptive devices with which surprise can be
effected by stretching the rules of harmony, rather than
abandoning them.

It is one of the beauties of improvisation to feign

modulation to a new key through a formal cadence and

then move off in another direction. This and other
rational deceptions make a fantasia attractive; but

they must not be excessively used, or natural relation-

ships will become hOpelessly buried under them.13'

The whole issue of modulation and deceptions is absolutely
central to Bach's aesthetic groundplan, for it is here, in
music that we find the equivalent of mannerism in art. The
essence of mannerism is the liberties the artist takes with
natural configuration of bodily prOportions, or with nature
as it is presented in a straightforward way. This liberty
comes from the rule of the imagination in art, wherein each
artist transforms reality through the prism of his unique
sensibility giving us something more than mere reproduction.
In following the circle of fifths, the musician proceeds
according to the harmonious relationships found in music
that can be reproduced in nature, as in the natural sounding

of the interval of the fifth. When he, instead, deliberately

circumvents this, we have an approximation of the exaggeration

99

that is mannerism. It is in the originality of Bach's
harmonic language, especially as it becomes more inspired in
the coming sections, that we find not mere eccentricity,
but a musical mind that explored tonality in a way that was
far ahead of his time, and that gives Bach his strikingly
modern ring.

However, at this point in our analysis, we should recall
that the markedly sectional nature of A1, as we have seen it,
reflects the panOply of changing and effervescent moods that
defines the style of sensibility in music.

SECTION B

 

This mid-section, marked Poco Adagio, looks at first glance
to be something closer to Bach's loosely formulated sonata-
form, as seen in FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER. We find here
several features of that form, i.e., bar markings, melodic
material which becomes a guiding principle of the section, and
thematic contrast in the form of what resembles a first and .
second subject. In fact, if major and minor contrast was the
essence of section A1, we might say that contrast between the
two thematic elements becomes the essence of this mid-section.
However, on close examination, we find this section to be far
more elusive in terms of any organizing principle than the
seemingly freely composed first section.

It Opens With a clear statement Of A minor and the presen-
tation of a simple theme based on minor thirds in synCOpated
rhythm, yet we are presented at the outset with the inexplic-
able nature of this movement, as the phrase ends with a dis-

#

sonant sound in which B and G. present a jarring tone.

 

100

5 ,.

 

Immediately, we discover that the underlying harmonic lo-
gic of Section A will be abandoned here. As the first theme
continues in measure three, it moves one step higher to B,

but Bach adds the tension of the G#

in the bass line, possib-
ly as a leading tone that signals what is to come—-radical
modulations in the bass that are central to the restless, dis-

turbing quality of this movement.

 

Measure five begins what I would call the second theme
which, although still syncopated but less agitated in the
sense that it suggests the tonic key, has the sound of a
soliloquy. Its bass line is distinctive. Like the dimin-
ished chord of section A1, it acts on its own--for affective
purpose and dramatic intent, rather than it would behave

within a harmonic progression.

32

.b

    

101
Beginning with the pick-up at measure 8, Bach begins a devel—
Opment-like section in which this second theme serves as the
skeleton for an adventure in chromatic descent, with its mel-
ancholy effect, and its diminished thirds. Suddenly, this

tentativeness gives way to firm resolution at the end bf the

segment in measure 10.

 

Measures ll and 12 repeat essentially the same pattern, but

one-half step higher.

 

Again, at the pick-up in measure 12, the pattern begins anew,
one step higher, but the descent this time ends, not in
resolution, but in the most abrupt and startling fashion,

with the following dissonance.

 

102

'Measure 15 now becomes one of Bach's rather pregnant links,
belonging neither to first or second theme, but having a

character of its own, and a more lyrical sound

0'

 

leading back to the return of theme one, in the tonic at first.

 

Measures 18 through 21 extend theme one, but with free

modulations.

.I’ :

 

The next passage is virtually a restatement of 11 through
14 with its significant resolution in measure 23, and the
dissonant configuration of the B octave in the bass against

the D-F-A in the treble at measure 27.

 

103

 

Now, from the pick—up at measure 27, the writing becomes

a fusion of the three different motivic elements of the B
section. There is a wild fling of imaginative writing that
explodes into the abstract rather than arriving at any clear,
logical and orderly recapitulation. Of particular interest
in this segment, are measures 29 and 30, where the motive
from the link in measure 15 appears once again, although in
disguise. This reappearance supports our contention that,
abstract and even unruly as Bach can be, nothing happens as
a result of mere whim or sheer accident. Having introduced
a motive only one measure long, Bach keeps it in store, and
uses it again so that purposiveness and unity are subtly
alluded to. Here, in what appears to be an explosion, fol-
lowed by a trailing off into a subjective impulse rather than

a formulatic ending, we find Bach to be a craftsman by his

very nature.

 

104

 

Looking over this section in its entirety, we find it to
be,in one sense, on an entirely different plane than A1 and
A2. With the exception of the empfindsamer passage, the A
sections are rhapsodic rather than rhetorical. This Adagio,
in fact, is more than rhetorical. It is theatrical, in the
sense that its phrases take on the accents and pitch patterns
of a highly emotive speech. The constantly descending chro-
maticisms cause it to throb with intensity. Whereas there
were no dynamic markings in the A sections, Bach has careful-
ly given us alternating louds and softs here. Certainly, at
its nebulous ending, we hear a trailing, whispered, somewhat
incoherent statement. Yet, once again, Bach has given us the
illusion of abstraction, within an organizing principle, but
this time in the contrasting sections of first and second
theme, with the additional fragment from the link completing
the whole. Although the section builds toward less structure,
rather than an organic rounding Off at the end, and presents
an elusive harmonic scheme, we have seen that Bach has skill-

fully woven his themes into a writing that has both structure

and unity.

105

SECTION A2

 

We come to the second A section now, but in a surprising
and unexpected manner. Once again, we have evidence that no
motive remains completely fragmentary in Bach's writing, and
the Allegro Opens with a variation on the brief section of

intervals from A1, following the chromatic run.

Allegro. .._.

 

The figures alternate between bass and treble clef in a new
pattern, in which the leaps are startling, but move toward
the arpeggiated runs of A1. Bach gives us a clear statement

of the A minor key again, disturbed only by the Bb

3E3}:
DJ V A

W

 

 

 

Now, however, he recalls the original Opening motive with a

return of the first two—note, half step interval.

 

 

 

106

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

. u~q_-JE!3=L I
Eghq::::1§§f;;;;r- -1;;:=====:j. ‘% i L-
4 T 9‘" '3. 'f ",1... r
:5
.3 _ - #4”
L -_ -_ _._..____.-._ .. —

 

 

 

 

 

 

This motive remains, but only within a wildly improvisational
sounding run in which he begins to modulate to Ab major, only
to find ourselves, suddenly, back in the tonic signature of

Fb major

 

n‘ -

Thefnext two pages are a wild jumble of all the elements
of A1, but juxtaposed in starker position and falling in
what seems to be random sequence. This randomness, however,
is only a clever illusion. The real key to the nature of
this final section is the way in which Bach brings back all
the elements of A1, but without the underlying logic. These
elements become the creatures of his mind and his imagination
both.

In the A1 we could plot out some structural system, with
deliberate moves from major to minor, with cadences that re-
turn to the original key, with links that make transitions,
with the unrest of the sixteenth notes alternated in minor
third sequence at the beginning rather than the end of the

section. Here, in A2, we have what, at first glance, seems

to be a recapitulation. But it proves to be a clever

107

deception. Instead, we have, once again, an abstraction of

A , fragments that return with only a subtle illusion to

their origin.

.571

    
    
 

§

.5 T1

   

B5

 

They are followed by a move toward repetition of the original
run based upon the two-note motive, but heading, instead,

into the key of Bb major, with a pedal point on the A natural,

and ending on the dominant of Eb major.

 

Now the empfindsamer appears again, but suddenly, with-
out preparation by a link, lowered a fifth, and shorn of its

whispered ending that followed the move to C major.

108

Now, our link from A1 returns, but this time raised, rather

than lowered, a fifth,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and modulating back to a literal restatement of the opening
run in Eb major that now continues in exact imitation until
it is cut off by a firmata following two, rather than four,
appearances of the-B diminished chord. Other than this omis-
sion, Bach brings the piece to its conclusion with precise

restatement, giving final coherence and unity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q

'57
”311
I IQ

 

 

Having denuded this fantasia of its outward clothing, we
must dress it, once again, in its outer garment of structure,
form, and, above all, the flow of its sections as they reach
both the ear and the sensibility of the listener. Bach has
endowed it with several of the aesthetic and stylistic fea—

tures of late eighteenth century, preclassical style. The

110

effect of the piece is to suggest creative freedom, simplicity
and the thinner texture of keyboard writing, together with an
unconventional harmonic scheme. HOwever, it is not in these
stylistic features, but in the dramatic heterogenity of the
piece that its innovative character lies. As we move from
section to section, we find a reflection of the specific atti-
tude toward the passions-~that is, that the true nature of
man lies neither in reason nor in feeling alone, but in an
incredible tapestry in which rich diversity combines with

b

beauty and form, just as we have seen in the Fantasia in E

major of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

FOOTNOTES
Chapter Three

l'Elizabeth Holt, ed., A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF ART, Vol. II
Doubleday Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., Inc., N.Y., 1958,
p. 316.

2'ArnOld Hauser, THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART, Vol. III, Vin-
tage Books, N.Y., P. 120.

3'Op. cit., Holt, p. 315.

4'The absence of bar lines is nothing radical in light of the
history of the unmeasured prelude, common in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, and used as late as Mozart in his
Adagio from the FANTASIE AND FUGUE in C Major, K.V. 394.

One should be aware, however, of the tradition of inter—
pretive freedom intended by this technique of writing. The
unmeasured preludes of Louis Couperin are very important in
this respect, since they are written not only without bar
lines, but also with only the broad outlines of the chords,
leaving it up to the performer to fill in the harmony. Study
of these unmeasured preludes tells us a great deal about the
importance of improvisation in the seventeenth and early eight-
eenth centuries. Every good musician was expected to have
this skill as part of his musical equipment. Today, this art
is largely lost to keyboard players except organists trained
in the French school, who are expected to be able to improvise
at length on any given theme.

Margaret Fabrizio, harpsichordist at Berkeley has made a
thirty minute television tape on the unmeasured preludes of
Couperin, and the way in which they indicate that performance
of Johann Sebastian Bach preludes, as well, should be per-
formed with more freedom, rather than a strict observance of
tempi markings. This tape is in the library at Oregon Insti—
tute of Technology.

The following example shows the manner in which Couperin
left the unmeasured sections Open, but moved quite suddenly
to a structured section, as we have seen with somewhat more
preparation in Carl Philipp Bach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A I.) _.
u If T A . ,%
l h“
I A“ 7" f5 A D f— \ AA—
vnn A (1" A 7 AIL A u v j A J‘—
V k v V? v ‘7 " O ‘,
\
w A 3.; r '
._ J A
7 . “

 

 

111

112

C Iungemcnt dc monument l

    

5'Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, ESSAY ON THE TRUE ART OF PLAYING
KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS, Ernst Eulenburg, Ltd., London, p. 431.

6'ibid., P. 432.

7'Figured bass, in which the composer gave the broad outlines,
or suggestion for the chords, as in the unmeasured prelude,
was common in the preceding periods, but was now giving way
to the changing style. With more amateurs playing this music,
with the art of improvisation dying, and with the assertive-
ness of the composer on the rise, figured bass was not as
common by the late part of the century. Bach's use of it in
the fantasias, then, is not innovative, but a continuation of
the tradition of performer as composer, and should be seen as
such.

8'op. cit., Bach, P. 442

9'op. cit., Bach, p. 431

10'op. cit., Bach, p. 434

11'Op. cit., Bach, p. 434

12'Op. cit., Bach, p. 435

13'Op. cit., Bach, P. 434

14'Martin Warnkey, PETER PAUL RUBENS, LIFE AND WORK, trans-
lated by Donna Pedini Simpson, Barron's Educational Series,
Woodbury, N.Y., 1980.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE MUSICAL PRINCIPLE IN EXTENSION:
1

. . . pieces, which seem made for . . . another century."
Having subjected Bach's Fantasia in Eb major to the micro-
sc0pic view, we have, perhaps, verged upon the cold and clin-
ical attitude which we know to be too narrow in focus. Yet,
precise definition is the offspring of thorough analysis, and
we are rewarded with an understanding of the underlying mech-
anisms used by the artist to produce the aesthetic effect.
Now, with this understanding in hand, we should return to the

macrosc0pic, and consider the FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER, Bach's
most mature set of keyboard works as a whole as they illu-

minate the style that identifies the composer at the apex of

his creative life. Having defined the musical principle, we

should now ask how it appears in, and affects FUR KENNER UND

 

LIEBHABER from an overview.

 

Since our purpose has been to place Bach's empfindsamkeit

 

within the mainstream of musical and ideological change, we
should be aware of the manner in which it informs his mature
style, reflecting a lifetime of creative exploration. Al-
though one should not completely isolate these keyboard pieces
from the orchestral and chamber works that are part of Bach's

total corpus, the FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER affords a unique

 

Opportunity for a better understanding of the ephemoral nature

of the empfindsamkeit of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, a term

 

that has been, in great part, superficially understood.
Much attention today has been given to the resurrection of
CsmhfirliBaoh's symphonies and chamber works. In particular,

113

114
we find the symphonies becoming part of the regular orchestral
repertoire, and a set of eight has just been recorded using
the original instrumentation.2'NOr should one ignore the
hauntingly expressive chamber works, especially the trios and
quartets for flute and strings in which the elements of the
empfindsamkeit play such an important role. Because of the
large output of flute music written for his employer Freder-
ick the Great, we tend to hear Bach performed regularly on
this instrument.

However, rarely today do we hear these unique keyboard

pieces from FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER for a number of reasons.

 

For one thing, they do not have the virtuosic fire and pro-
grammatic effect of the Scarlatti sonatas. They are deeply
personal vignettes. For another, they tend to be the forerun-
ner of longer keyboard works that lend themselves to fuller
develOpment, warranting serious commitment by a performing
artist. One might point to Bach's Sonata III in Ab major
from the 1781 edition, with its striking resemblance to
Beethoven's Opus 2, No. I., as an example. Since the latter
expands more fully upon the former, it becomes a more logical
choice in the modern repertoire. Lastly, the beauty, the
striking individuality, and the special expressive quality

Of these pieces from FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER tend to fall

 

within the realm of keyboardists who specialize in eighteenth
century music, many of whom are harpsichordists. With the
exception of a few, they are known mainly to connoisseurs of

the more obscure composers of that period.

115

Yet study of these infrequently performed works should prove
richly rewarding for performers, listeners, and musicologists
alike. The manner in which Bach develOped and changed his
musical principle, so closely scrutinized in the previous
chapter, is of central importance to our concern here--the
nature of expression as it was related to sensibility, and
as it played a role in stylistic change in the late eighteenth
century.

We will find from a systematic examination of the manner
in which Bach's musical principle, most clearly stated in his
fantasias, intrudes itself into other forms, that it pervades

the entire collection. Looking at FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER

 

in this way, we find a corroboration of Barford's thesis that
the fantasias are

a fundamental pillar of Bach's style . . . affording

us many important clues to the precise way in which

Bach applied his own theories.3-
Moreover, it is in this compositional format that Bach, giving
rein to his most innovative ideas, reveals his pivotal role.
In the fantasias we find him exploiting, as part of his deep-
est consciousness, the gifts inherited from his father--for
originafiiqu for variety in modulation, for the uniqueness that
comes from diversity within unity and, above all, for the
great improvisational genius for which his father was held in
awe. Bach's fantasias, his most pioneering works, become the
crucible of a musical principle that later composers used as
a matrix for the changing nature of the expressive purpose

and content of music. Richard Crocker has said

116

It seems fruitless to try to relate the details of

this expressive language of the past, or even to

describe them. The essence of Bach's technique is

distortion of traditional turns of phrase, or, at

the most intense moments, the creation of an entirely

original new language. In earlier keyboard works

Each has actually imitated recitative style, but in

these last fantasias he is concerned not with style

of any kind but only with expression.4-

Yet we might say that the expressive effect of the differ-
ent ways in which Bach emphasized contrast, the sense of im-
provisational Spontaneity_ as we have seen it in the Eb major
Fantasia, becomes a style in itself. Looking at the collec-
tion in its entirety we find that this stylistic feature,
or perhaps. more accurately, the musical principle, is perva-
sive. We find it in Sonata VI in G major of the 1779 edition
with one movement written in fantasia form, and in Rondo I in
E major from the 1781 edition in sections that bear strong
resemblance to fantasia form. Conversely, as in the Fantasia
II in C major of the 1785 edition, we find a fantasia that
exploits the motivic variation and strophic repetition of
rondo form.

Bach's characteristically Open approach to form, particular-
ly to what was called the sonata at the time, has already been
discussed. Looking over FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER as a whole
certainly bears out this contention. However, it is interest-
ing to note that over the eight year period from the first
edition in 1779. to the last in 1787, Bach moved progressively
away from what he called a sonata, and more toward rondo form
and the fantasia. While the 1787 edition has six sonatas

exclusively, the second and third editions have three, and

the last three editions only two each. Although we find a

117
remarkable freedom of composition in several of these sonatas,
Bach seems to be moving toward motivic variation as the key-
stone of the kind of variety combined with the order of repee
tition that the rondo form offers, in addition to the special
character of the fantasia.

Looking at Sonata I of the 1779 edition, we immediately
find a striking example of rhapsodic scale-passages that ex-
plore tonal color and hint at a motive based on intervals of
half steps, highly suggestive of a fantasia.5' In the Open-
ing section we find nothing more than a freely running tocat—
ta-like section that explores the key of C major, as in the

following example.

I’reslissimo.

 

 

Although barred, we certainly find this section to have the
improvisational mark of the fantasias, and the absence of
any clearly stated theme is striking.

The repeat or second segment of this A section explores a
modulatory scheme, much as we would expect in the develOpment

section of a sonata, yet it is more improvisational.

118

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here in this very first sonata, composed as early as 1773,
we find Bach to present us with an improvisational style of
writing characterized by motive rather than theme.

Sonatas II and III of this first edition have no quasi-
fantasia writing, however Sonata IV proves to be unusual.
One of the longest in the entire collection, with thirteen
pages altogether, we find the marked sectional contrasts that
characterize Bach's freer style in the fantasias.

Although the opening is somewhat more structured in terms
of a more open suggestion of motive or melodic phrase, this

gives way to a section of freely running passage by line

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

three.
. —-" .§ 3? ‘ === § ==
‘ 2 .. -— . o o o
'L' m o 2'2'A .1‘1..' 7 o-oi_ -.t A“
* '1..- _ :"" —“*:' -_:__'.':::_ I 1 I: f“,
{g t“;..'. t-'.‘_._”"‘!.“- -zrfz”;:_-‘;— - A-
'7 ads -— ar'* *Ear* g,

 

119
Throughout this piece contrasts are powerful and strongly de-
fined,with heavier sturm and drang passages contrasting

with shorter segments of motivic fragments as in the follow-

ing example;

 

 

or in the following, with the four sixteenth-note motives

bouncing from bass to treble.

 

It is in Sonata VI of the 1779 edition that we find the
most obvious example of a fantasia sandwiched between two

formal sections of a sonata. In the two outer sections of

120
this sonata, we find a writing similar to that already quoted

--that is,freely running passages that intrude themselves in-

to more structured, thematic writing, such as the following.

 

The Andante, however, uses no such deception. We are pre-
sented with a textbook example of a fantasia. In fact, Bach
cites this Andante of Sonata VI as a lesson in the principles
of free improvisation in the VERSUCH.6‘ Here we have a
forthright presentation of fantasia form with Opening runs in
metered bars, a harping on a diminished seventh that finally
appears as one of Bach's subtly stated "pivotal" chords,
deceptive cadences-—in short, all of the technical devices
that Bach has given us in the ESSAY as the compositional ma-
trix of the fantasia.

Quoted below are the first three lines in which we find
the play on the tonic key, the modulation, the subtle motivic
suggestion, and one of Bach's more subtle diminished chords

in arpeggio in the first measure of the third line.

121

Andante.
3

    

 

 

Of course, since this fantasia does not stand on its own,
fitting into a larger piece, its sections are reduced in
length. We have the following brief glimpse of an emp-
findsamer passage with its strong hint at the key of D major,
#

9

and the dissonant sound of a D natural against an F as

below.

 

122

 

Finally, in conclusion, without the space available in a

full-length fantasia, Bach brings it to a surprising close,

# and F#

playing on the diminished sound with the C figuring
against the play on the tonic in the pentultimate measure

and the final cadence bringing it to rest.

A
n5

 

Coming to the 1780 edition, we find the first rondo, in-
dicating Bach's interest in this form in which motivic varia-
tion is central. Essentially, the rondo develOped from a
strOphic form of poetry of the thirteenth century in which
troubadores sang a song so tjmt ‘the first two lines remain
fixed while the refrains or choruses were varied or new
material. In a rondo, the original theme, once stated, reap-
pears marking off sections, and closes the entire piece, re-
peating the opening phrases.

In the Opening Rondo I in C major, one of his more inter-
esting and innovative, Bach exploits the cyclical nature of
the form which also becomes a generating formal factor in

the fantasias. Looking at the manner in which the sections

123
of this rondo alternate abruptly in rhythm, style, and mood,
one sees quite clearly that Bach is interested in more than
motivic variation here. As in the quasi-fantasia of the An-
dante from Sonata VI, this rondo suggests in its starkly de-
marcated sections the sense of upheaval, the abruptly chang-

ing passions that characterize Bach's musical principle.

 

124

 

Once again Bach Opens the 1781 edition with another strik—

ing and completely unorthodox rondo, Rondo I in E major, in

which whole sections are clearly freely composed and an adap-

tation of fantasia form as in the following example.

 

In the unusual intervals of line one, and the alternating
thirty—second notes of line two, we recall similar writing

already cited in the Eb major sonata.

Since a thorough discussion of the extraordinary character

of the rondos in FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER would lead us off

125

of this rondo alternate abruptly in rhythm, style, and mood,
one sees quite clearly that Bach is interested in more than
motivic variation here. As in the quasi-fantasia of the An-
dante from Sonata VI, this rondo suggests,in its starkly de-
marcated sections,the sense of upheaval, the abruptly chang—

ing passions that characterize Bach's musical principle.

 

126
into a tangent that would distract from our central concern,
the fantasias, we must limit outselves to a few examples
and a more general discussion. What is most important to
note is the manner in which Bach stresses the abrupt section-
alism as seen in our analysis. Rondo II in G major in the
1781 edition is a clear example of this sectional writing

despite the overall cyclical form.

 

127

 

 

What we find here as well as in several other of the more
innovative rondos, are sections that change in a jarring, a-
brupt fashion, while, at the same time, an overall unity is
established by the reappearance of the original theme. As we
will see in our study of the fantasias themselves, Bach some-
times approximates the same form in the fantasia emphasizing,
once again, the interchangeability of the form.

Arriving at the 1783 and 1785 collection, we are clearly
in a period of Bach's most highly develOped creativity and
unorthodoxy. Now the rondos and fantasias figure ever more
largely than the sonatas, while we will find the striking
interchangeability of form with both rondos and fantasias
serving as the most personal and creative vehicle for expres—
sion. Clearly now we are in a stage in which the composer
'goes beyond the forms, somewhat in the same manner of Beethoven
in his latest and most unorthodox period. Rondo I in A major
‘of the 1783 edition is a good example in the contrast of free-

ly composed sections with Bach's distinctive empfindsamer.

 

128

 

In conclusion, we might say that the rondos of FUR KENNER

 

UND LIEBHABER reflect the special nature of the fantasias

 

in that they have become a vehicle for unorthodox and innova-
tive writing, and for the expression of Bach's most personal
and creative being.

Finally, in the last collection of 1787 we have only two
short sonatas, two rondos, and two fantasias, one of which
concludes the collection. In this edition, published one
year before the composer's death, we find Bach's writing to
take a surprising direction. Rather than ending the collec—
tion on a note of freedom Bach moves toward a more structured,
more restrained, more formal style. Here there are no un-
barredneesures,rm>figured bass, not even the free running
rhapsodic scale passages. Here in Bach's final statements
we find not resignation or even the pathos and melancholy of

the earlier empfindung, but a sublime and calm repose. The

 

driving freedom that implies rebellion, the stormy assertion

of passion with its somewhat labored expressive quality has

129
abated. The Fantasia in C major, the very last of the collec—
tion, states its message with the economy of means that sug-
gests the classical style by now absorbed into the musical
consciousness of the late century. This work warrants special
attention and we shall examine it in more detail shortly.

Now, however, having examined the general drift of stylis—
tic change in the overall collection, we turn to the fantasias
specifically. Once again, comparison of the fantasias as they
appear chronologically gives us important clues about the
stylistic Changes taking place and the manner in which Bach
amended his own theories about improvisation in his latest
writings. What we will find is that the earlier fantasias,
especially those in the 1783 edition, subscribe more faithfully
to the directives of the VERSUCH, while the later works of 1785
and 1787 move away from spontaneity and toward a more complex
and structured writing.

Keeping the stylistic features of the Fantasia in Eb major
in mind, we find its companion piece the Fantasia in A major
to follow its structural outline rather closely. The work
opens with four lines of scale passages with no bar markings

at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

130

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our diminished chord presents itself at the end of line four

in the arpeggiated form, and repeats three times successively.

    

a ’ttenfnhn- -"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A link to the empfindsamer section is not as clear here,

nor is the section as clearly rhetorical. Instead, the syn—

copated chord which announces it becomes a distinctive motive

that closes the Al, comprises the two brief statements of the

Adagio, and persists in hidden form through the concluding
2

Allegretto of A

 

 

 

 

 

 

131

Adagio. (en. A llegrello.

    

N
M'

The B section or Andante is based on the simplest of

themes, an arpeggiated figure against two alternate quarter

notes

Andante.

    
    

almost bisected in half by a dramatic rolled chord,

.fl’

and ending this brief section with the introduction of a new
motive, while the familiar radical key change from Bb major

to A major suddenly appears.

Allegretto.

    

A2, the Allegretto, follows essentially the same pattern

we have seen in the Eb major, with juxtaposition of sections
from A1, shifts in tonality, a wildly free and improvisa—
tional section followed by a return to scalic passages in
the tonic, but ending this time with a figured bass. This
ending should be kept in mind for comparison with the utterly

simple descending line that concludes the entire collection.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

arpeggio 1'
7| 0| : ‘

 

    

5:

These two fantasias, the A major and the Bb major of the

1783 edition stand as twin pillars of Bach's freely improvi-
sational style as it articulates the principles set down in
the VERSUCH.

Moving on to the Fantasia I in F major of the 1785 edition,
we find Bach introducing certain important stylistic innova—
tions despite many features of the last two we have looked
at? such as scalic passages, the repeated diminished chord,

alternating sixteenth notes, motivic variation and unity.

133
On the second page Bach surprises us with a feature that he
will exploit and return to from now on-—a curiously Beethov-
ian sounding of an octave in the bass which has a somewhat
dissonant ring, alternating with an unorthodox interval in
the treble repeated three times—-giving it the simplicity,
yet the force of reiterated statement, and set off by a long

rest before the arpeggiated figures of the first page return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and
q

 

- fig _
g E. Li 6 fil “fl . ' :1

ti!
o

These arpeggios lead abruptly to what should be demarcated,
but in the absence of marking is clearly the B section, be-

ginning with the measured bars.

 

The next five lines proceed along a haunting, mysterious
course in which we find the signature writing of Bach--inde-
finable analytically, tonally eccentric, spiritually in the
realm of subjective soliloquy. All of it is built upon the
motive presented above and variants of the triplets against

bass, as in the following phrases.

134

    

Hf

Immediately following this section Bach introduces, for
the first time, a stormy section marked Fortissimo and Pres-
tissimo both with a prelude type figure. This writing will
become a significant factor in the fantasias from here on
and seems to this writer to have a curious ring of the
past about it. Bringing back a prelude figure, but imbuing
it with the eccentricities of his strange intervals and dis-
sonances, Bach seems to resurrect a ghost from the past, but
one that takes on a sturm und drang character. These pre-
lude—like sections harking back to the older baroque style

almost suggest a musical "stream of consciousness."

 

 

Ell hi. 1., F14! a? ? g

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_A

v , A A ‘ _ l ‘ rv

:' 7 - ' 'fi - '

i U ffpro'sliuhuo .

: LET: A; g t 1 -3 '2
:2 VI 7r 1:1 f g 1'1r :I
I T—

 

 

 

This figure continues through many modulations right up to
the truncated Allegretto on the final page, returning to a
variant of the Opening, and finally back to the tonic. How-
ever, a link almost identical to the octaves in the first sec-
tion of the Eb major brings us, again, to a figured bass

closing.

135

Following this somewhat inexplicable performance, a short-
er piece which uses many techniques of Bach's fantasia style
of writing, yet clearly evades their order, and introduces
some striking new features, we are in for an even greater
surprise.

The Fantasia II in C major, of the 1785 edition, proves to
be one of Bach's most virtuosic exercises in motivic variation-
and unity. The work Opens with what appears to be a straight-
forward statement Of thematic material, an arpeggiated fi ire

with strictly measured bars.

Andantino

 

However, this hint at formal organization quickly gives way
to an incredibly ingenious free play on this originating theme

with modulations.

V i '

 

The character of this piece comes from the manner in which
the original motive becomes the generating factor in what
proves to be the longest and most complex of the fantasias in

the collection. We find that after two brief digressions in

136

the last two measures of line two, the original motive reap-
pears, first in the free triplets in the bass, and then back

to the complete motive at the end of line three.

M

 

Even more, another unifying factor presents itself—-that
is the repetition of a diminished chord that assumes many
different shapes throughout. but follows the outline and af-
fect of what Bach has already suggested within the motive
itself as early as measure three in the bass. (Refer back
to line 4.)

In fact, this original motive becomes the germ from which
Bach takes the most striking and abstract section of the work
as he works it into quasi-prelude figures that freely and

spontaneously modulate, taking up the entire page of six lines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

137

This stormy section comes to its conclusion in one of Bach's
most strangely beautiful chromatic descents, followed immedi-
ately by the Andantino, made up again of the original motive
presented in the outlines of a diminished chord, and continu-
ing the haunting abstraction of the sharply defined diminished

sound.

Andantino f
3 b

 

This haunting tonality extends itself into an extraordinary

empfindsamer passage, one that employs in the musical signa-

 

ture of the composer those exquisite "turns of phrase," the
"entirely new language" of Crocker. One can only describe
its quality by the tactile and aural experience that comes
from evoking its spirit on the keyboard itself. However, we
find, again, that Bach forges this most sensitive rhetoric
from variations on the structural motive of this fantasia.
Yet complexity and contrast prevail as he brings back the
thrice repeated motive of the Fantasia in F major, although
using it here in a completely new fashion. Here we have one
of the most striking examples yet of Bach's brilliance at
motivic variation, a technique that brings to mind the genius
of Beethoven for building and expanding an entire work on the
simplest of themes. This section then comes to rest in a

subtle restatement of the Opening statement from measures

138

one through five, but in an entirely new tonality, until the

final cadence brings it to rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

139
The Allegretto that follows is a shock following the ab-

stract and impassioned tonality of its preceding section.
Suddenly, we are in the brightness of the key of G major, with

a theme of utter simplicity.

Allegretto

 

The following page takes this theme into the modulatory
explorations and thematic nuances of a develOpment section,

as in the following passages.

 

However, it trails off into nothingness. rather than a con-

clusion, by the insertion of a completely different section

forged out of a familiar arpeggiated figure.

140

Andantino

 

)

 

Following this we have three lines in which each theme

reappears in sequence and in juxtaposition.

Allegretto

    

P

141

Amlnntino

 

The concluding three pages present, once again, a rather
unruly jumble of all three themes in free play until we are
returned, via a modulatory run, to the Opening statement in

the tonic brought to rest with a conclusive V—I cadence.

 

n 1‘ Fiat.

142

Without doubt we have been treated here to one of Bach's
freest and most tonally abstract works, bound together by
the structural mechanism of motivic variation and unity.

Finally we arrive at the 1787 edition in which we find
fantasias which combine the daring tonalities, sectional
contrasts, and motivic variation of those already seen with-
in a move toward more structure, on one hand, and a thicker
more pianistic writing, on the other. Here we will find
that Bach adapts his latest keyboard works to the technical
changes brought about by the rising pOpularity and availabil-
ity of the piano. and to the tempering of the excesses of

sturm und drang by an emotional reserve, a classical re-

 

straint and balance. In the moving Larghetto of the very
last fantasia, we will find the majesty, the tonal colors,
and the melodic beauty of those composers who were just ar-
riving at their creative maturity as Bach, their great men-
tor, was close to the end of his life.

Yet in Fantasia I in Bb major, we are in for another
surprise, one that we might not have anticipated. Here in
Bb major, Bach brings back the essential motivic scheme of
our close friend, the Eb major Fantasia, subject of our anal-
ysis. Opening in a running, scalic passage, we find the same
intervals of half-steps comprising a motive that becomes a

generating scheme.

143

Allegretto

    

' Ira.

However, this piece will not tolerate the unfettered free—
dom of the Eb major, and we are presented in line two with
the resounding rolled chords: the first an F major, the domi-

nant of Bb, the second diminished, and an abrupt switch to

three quarter time.

N? M

   

     

trn.

A brief run on the major key again dissolves into dimin-
ished arpeggiated figures followed by the introduction of a
new theme in line four, set off against contrary running

triplets, a hint of Eb major. Once again, the octaves in the

last line lead tt>an.empfindsamer passage.

 

 

144

 

The empfindsamer here, with its insistence upon a rhetoric

 

that will make its own phrasing and timing, eliminates the
bar for its duration and builds ever upward to an insistent
but wordless question.

This, Bach at his most searching, is followed by the rest
of a section in which each motive and element returns in se-
quence: the Bb major scale, the octaves, the half~step motive

from the Opening, and one measure of an empfindsamer frag—

 

ment that seems to spring out of nowhere.

 

145

 

This sequential pattern continues throughout the piece
which has no demarcations by sectional markings, only the
Allegretto at the beginning. Bar markings, however, remain
throughout,with the exception of the empfindsamer passage re-
peated. Thus, the rest of the piece is an alternated repeti-
tion of all of the elements of the work-—scale passages, con-
trary triplets, octaves, prelude figures, original motive,

and empfindsamer, with the exception of a sudden appearance

of a one measure motive, thus:

 

and, finally, the expected modulation back to the tonic and

a straightforward repeat of the Opening, ending on a V-I ca-

dence of Bb major.

 

146

 

ten.

.....

We come, finally, to the conclusion of the collection and
the piece that least subscribes to what we have seen as fan—

tasia-form in FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER. Here we have a tex-

 

ture of writing that one wOuld hardly reCOgnize to be in this
genre. There are no scale passages, no runs, no myriad in-
versions of the seventh, no unmarked measures, no modulations
with their wild ambiance. Instead we have the presentation
of a simple theme in the basic outline of the tonic key, C
major, that follows the orderly sequence and repetition of

a formal sonata, ending its first complete statement squarely

'1-
(with the exception of the F1) on the dominant of C major, G.

l’resto di molto

    

 

Y?

 

147

This section continues in a develOpment-like exploration of

the theme that, again, remains tonally conservative, with the

heaviest reference to the dominant G and the subdominant. F.

 

It concludes with a repeat of the original theme, this

time stated in the bass, but ending on a I—IV cadence C-F.

    

1'0” 0' .1» Min

In the Andante, we find that Bach has not given up his id-
iosyncratic style altogether, although the straightforward

tracing of a thinly outlined theme remains.

Andante

    

 

148

However, we find a certain dissonance, as in the Bb-G of

the measure 10, while a syncopated rhythm and a hint at the

 

empfindsamer in line four add a touch of uncertainty. In par—

ticular, the final cadence with its G#

leaves us hanging.

 

l’resto (ll molto

    

In the Presto di molto, our next section, we have an ex-

traordinary demonstration of Bach's late style of motivic
_variation. It is so strongly Haydnesque that one feels

the playful banter of that composer in its spirit. In parti-
cular, one is reminded of the Haydn Sonata No. 46 in C, Hob,
XVI: 50, with its deliberately exaggerated pauses.

It Opens with a lively and sprightly variation on theme
.one of the opening which fuses, almost imperceptibly, by
measure five into a statement of the second theme from the.
Andante. The alternation of the two in an imaginative and
playful fashion' characterizes the whole of this section.
Theme one returns again after a long pause, so typical of
Bach, and emulated by Haydn, but only for five measures, with

the last two nothing more than a teasing reminder that leaves

149

the phrase trailing off into nowhere.

 

The next phrase teases us again coming a hair‘s breadth
closer to completion of theme one, but then another pause,
and back to theme two again. Now we have a fusion of the
two so that one can separate out the two themes only with

difficulty, so cleverly are they intermingled.

 

150

 

All of this continues until line four, measure two, where
theme one returns again undisguised except for a move into
Bb major. Theme one continues on until the conclusion of
this movement, a sublimely simple descending line that is
nothing more than a statement of the final phrase of theme
one in thirds, with its chromaticism taken from the key of

Bb major and ending on the familiar pause.

 

 

    

151

The allusion to Haydn here comes from not only the witty,
playful feeling of these variations, but the tonal sense
which is more orderly, less extravagant than we have come
to expect from Bach. Excursions to other keys are not quite
as far flung, and the playful pause is exploited consistently
throughout. Here we have substantial evidence that Bach has
lost none of his originality in motivic variation, yet ex-
presses it in a manner that more closely approximates the
classical style.

Now we come to the lovely Larghetto, comprising five lines.
and moving in the slow stately majesty of a simple, but ethe-
real'melody. Clearly, in the thickness of its sonority this
is pianistic writing, and suggests Beethoven now rather than
Haydn. Although the thirds remain, we find an harmonic out-
line that has the profound drama of Beethoven.. Despite
unexpected harmonic gestures this Larghetto moves along in
its stately tempo until the last measure of line three, where
a synCOpation creeps in. Then, at the last measure of line
four, a rhythmicvariation on the melody leads to two unexpect-

ed measures of an empfindsamer passage, closing the section

 

on a reiterated sigh.

Larghetto sostonuto

 

152

 

And now we come to Bach's final soliloquy-—perhaps not his
last composition, but without question a conscious farewell
in a song without words, just as his father wove the initials
B-A—C—H into the ART OF FUGUE as his musical swan song.

Oddly enough, we have not an empfindsamer passage, but a
return of the Presto di molto, with the very same playful
variations on two closely melded themes. In this return of
theme one, however, we are taken through a series of key

changes that once again make excursions, but not into the

153
abstract landscape of Bach's more daring modulations. Begin-
ning in Bb, he moves back to the tonic key in the next phrase,
then to G major, the dominant of the tonic, and then to D ma-
jor, the dominant of G major, ending on a solid rolled D major

chord, having followed the circle of fifths.

Drcsto di molto 511) J n m :5 b1: i

f I’

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following this is a recapitulation of the Opening, repeat-
ing it faithfully until the sudden appearance of a strange
chord built on G and F natural. Now the theme returns as it

did in section one, beginning on G in the bass. However,

this statement leads to another set of variations that

bring us to the trailing off of the phrase rather than a

cadence.

~An Ab double whole note is followed by an exquisitely ex—

pressive chromatic run, first ascending, then descending

154

in a lovely melodic pattern that bears some resemblance to our
second theme. Finally, one last statement of the quintessen-
tial diminished chord, and the most tender of endings. An
utterly simple descent against a double whole note. in the
tonic key, first in sixths, then in thirds, ends on the whis-
pered double p, the silence of the rest, and Bach's farewell
to the world--Il Fine. Here, in the most concise, the most

classically restrained of anything yet seen in the fantasias,

we can hardly hold back a tear, so moving is his statement.

 

 

 

‘ _ o
['3 f ’5: [’1’ ll Fa'm' .

 

What we have seen in this overview of FUR KENNER UND LIEB-
HABER, together with a comparative analysis of the fantasias
as they appear in chronological order, is the manner in which
the musical principle of Bach has undergone certain subtle
changes. Beginning very subtly with the F major of the 1785
edition, but coming on with great force in the C major of the
same edition, Bach amends the improvisational style that.

historicallyr comes from a long tradition of keyboard improvi-

155
sation during the baroque period.7 Very subtly. the move in
the later fantasias is toward thematic or melodic statement
and exploitation, as Opposed to the scale passages of the toc-
cata, barred measures, as Opposed to rhythmic freedom, and
most important, contrast that comes from motivic variation,
as well as the sectional contrast so important in the earlier
fantasias.

In fact,there are four major stylistic features that give
us the essence of Bach's changing style. First; is the manner
in which thematic variation combined with the unity of repeti-
tion, becomes the basic organizing factor of the piece.
Secondly, we have observed the changing textures of the writ-
ing with the more pianistic chordal structures, on the one
hand, and the more concise and melodic textures, on the other.
Thirdly, we find, in the last fantasias. no abnegation of
freedom and originality, but a constant move toward structure
and order that comes from Bach's absolutely ingenious motivic
variation, the cornerstone of unity in the last fantasias.

Last, and perhaps most important, we find the manner in

which, although not giving up the empfindsamer altogether,

 

Bach makes his statement in the calmer; more simple rhetoric
of the coming classical style. This style, of course, per-
vades the entire aesthetic of the C major Fantasia of 1787,
our concluding work. Rather than closing this piece, as in
the A major and F major Fantasias, with a figured bass that
allows improvisational latitude to the performer“ and speaks
in the language of a thicker harmony, Bach now expresses him-

self in the concise, clear, unadorned language of the coming

156

style. His important last statement, the summation of a
lifetime dedicated to forging a new expressive language from
music, is not left to the discretion of anyone but the com-
poser. Briefly, and simply, with the beauty and pathos that
we find in classicism at its height, Bach bids farewell in a
whispered descending line that is nothing more than an out-
line of the key of C major. Perhaps, one should turn to T.
S. Eliott for its ethos--"This is the way the world will end

--not with a bang, but a whimper."8

FOOTNOTES

Chapter Four

1'Glover, Cedric Howard, ed., DR. CHARLES BURNEY'S CONTINENTAL
TRAVELS 1770-1772, Blackie and Son Limited, London and Glas-
gow, 1927, p. 240. '

2'Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, EIGHT SYMPHONIES, recorded by
The Academy of Ancient Music, editions de L'OISEAU-LYRE,
Florilegium Series, Decca Records, London DSLO 557-8.

3'Barford, Philip, THE KEYBOARD MUSIC OF C. P. E. EACH, con-
sidered in relation‘to his musical aesthetic and the rise of

the sonata principle, Barrie and Rockliff, London, 1965,
p. 368.

4'Crocker, Richard L.,,A HISTORY or MUSICAL STYLE, McGraw-
Hill Book Company, New York, 1960, p. 236.

5'Interestingly, this sonata is dedicated to Madame Zernitz,
native of Warsaw, for the special esteem and friendship given
(my translation), indicating that the free, expressive, and
less formal nature of this sonata may have had something to

do with its sentimental -purpose.

6'Bach, C.P.E., ESSAY ON THE TRUE ART OF PLAYING KEYBOARD
INSTRUMENTS,translated by William J. Mitchell, Eulenburg Books,
London, 1974, p. 148.

7'See footnote in chapter on the unmeasured prelude.

B’Elliot, T. 8., THE WASTELAND, from THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF

AMERICAN VERSE, Richard Ellmann, ed., Oxford Univeristy Press,
New York, 1976, p. 600.

157

EPILOGUE

Reflecting now upon what we have learned from thorough
and precise analysis of Bach's musical principle as manifest-
ed in his late keyboard works, we should return once again
to its effect. The manner in which Bach influenced the great
triumvirate of classical composers, all of whom were alive
during his last years- and all of whom saw him as one of the
most important figures in German music at the time, is of the
greatest importance. As major composers in the modern reper-
toire, the average concert goer is far more likely to hear
their works than the works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Even
more, we are interested in why the greatest composers of his
day revered him so. Perhaps Mozart put it best when he said
"Emanuel Bach is the father, and we are his children. We can-
not do as he does, only learn from him."1

A musical principle, however, is not a law. Haydn, Mozart
and Beethoven each emulated Bach's stylistic innovations, but
made them their own. Although we can trace the effect of
the musical principle on each of these composers, it appears
in a different form in their respective works, and we must
look at each one individually to identify its presence in
their music.

Taking Haydn first, we have perhaps the best known example
of Bach's direct influence. Haydn especially loved Bach's
sonatas and played them all of his life with great delight
and reverence. We know from a letter written in 1750 when he
was 18 years of age and in Hamburg where he studied composi-

tion while ekeing out a living as a singer, that he first

158

159

discovered Bach through a publisher who recommended him.2

Writing later on the great thrill he experienced from his
discovery of Bach's ingenuity, he said,

I never left my piano until I had played the sonatas

through, and he who knows me can not but find that

I owe very much to Bach, for I understood and studied

him profoundly. Indeed, upon one occasion, he com-

plimented me upon it.

Moreover, we have direct reference to Haydn's special in-
terest in FUR KENNER UND LIEBHABER. He also tells us that
he played them with

such delight and sat at his piano so gladly for it

aroused in him a freer activity of fancy and heart-

felt emotions of similar form,

and that he revered the VERSUCH as

the best, most thorough and useful work which had
ever appeared as an instruction book.

In considering the manner in which Haydn both absorbed
and emulated the style of Bach, we find the musical principle,
or his aesthetic, to be less direct in his keyboard works.

In Haydn's sonatas we find the dynamics that Bach pioneered,
especially the long pauses, the surprise effect, and the sus-
pense of exaggerated rests. For this, the best example of
the manner in which Haydn used this technique to underscore
his own playful and witty style would be the aforementioned
SONATA NO 46 IN C MAJOR.

Haydn also utilized the unusual widely spaced intervals
that we have noted as intrinsic to Bach's empfindsamer pas-
sages, and the surprise modulations so striking in the Fan-
tasias. The incredible ingenuity of Bach's motivic variation,

and his technique of taking a motive from one section and

160

elaborating upon it in another, was also exploited by Haydn.
For the best example of this aspect of Bach's influence, we
might turn to the Eb Major Sonata S.C. 34 XVI, in which Haydn
resorts to some rather radical dissonances considering his
general proclivity for a harmony that proceeds along a more
orderly scheme of tonal exploration and return to original
key than Bach.6 In the Eb Major Sonata, Haydn uses a loos-
er scheme in which the augmented third, so familiar with Bach
introduces some unprepared dissonances. Haydn's thematic de-
velopment in the second section of this sonata is taken from
the first so that, he says, it can be ”heard with the under-
standing."7

In the long run, however, "Haydn was Bach's pupil, but
Beethoven his spiritual heir."8 Bach's influence tends to
come out in the lighter, witty side of Haydn, so much so that
he was accused by a writer for EUROPEAN MAGAZINE, October, 1784,
of deliberately burlesquing Bach in his op. 13 and 14 "ex-

9 This, of course,

pressly composed in order to ridicule Bach."
was a misunderstanding on the writer's part. However, the
source of the error is clear. Haydn enjoyed those techniques
that he found in Bach for suspense and surprise, but his own
development as an artist was not to lead him into the depths
of soul—searching that we find in Beethoven. Thus, Bach's
principle as an expressive tool is not as clearly evident in
the keyboard works of Haydn.

In considering Mozart, the most classical, polished, and

restrained, one might question the validity of any more than

superficial influence on the part of C. P. E. Bach.

161

We know that Bach's anglicized younger brother, Johann Chris-
tian, was a more direct influence on Mozart's keyboard style--
one can even find certain sonatas of MOzart that were heavily
borrowed from Johann Christian. Even more, Mozart's aesthe-
tic keynote is balance, and in a letter to his father, he
wrote that

passions, whether violent or not, must never be ex-

pressed in such a way as to excite disgust, as music,

even in the most terrible situations must never of-

fend the ear, but must please the listener.10

This statement on emotions, however, can be taken out of
context. Those who know Mozart's music in its sc0pe know
rthat he brings us to the deepest regions of every facet of
the human soul, including the tragic and the sorrowful, and
that he understood with the greatness of his genius the ex—
pressive power of dramatic surprise, unorthodox modulation,
sharp contrast in music. For example, when Mozart's VIOLA
QUINTET IN D MINOR was first performed, its insistent pathos
was so shocking to a late eighteenth century audience that
his patron withdrew the commission for the entire set.

More directly, we find the heritage of C. P. E. Bach

in certain of Mozart's own fantasies. The FANTASIE UND FUGUE

IN C MAJOR.K.V. 394 despite the thematic structure of its

 

Opening moves into the stormy tempest of the Andante almost
immediately. We find the sharp juxtaposition of major and
minor key set against a dark and foreboding diminished chord
here just as we have seen in Bach's fantasias, and, again,

in the inexplicable adagio that begins with a strong statement
of that chord followed by an entire passage of unbarred,

freely modulating runs.

162

The FANTASIE IN C MINOR, K.V. 396, has even more obvious

 

passages that suggest Mozart's deep indebtedness to Bach,
especially the Opening motive quoted below strongly reminis-

cent of Bach's empfindsamer passages,

 

Adagio

 

 

and the tempestuous sturm und drang, unbarred passages

 

which are a trademark of Bach's style in the fantasias-

 

163

However, for this author the most remarkable evidence of
Bach's principle of contrast as the underlying aesthetic comes
to us in the haunting and mysterious FANTASIE IN D MAJOR, K.V.
321, Although it is more tightly structured than the other
two cited, this shorter piece takes its powerful effect from
its marked sectionalism. Its dark and mysterious Opening ar-
peggios give way quite suddenly to a simple and rhetorical
Adagio section. As this builds toward the disturbed synCOpat-
ed exchange between bass and treble there is an unexpected
move to a passionate chromatic run that seems an interpolation,
bound as it is on either side by the Adagio. As in Bach's
sectionalism, this run. marked Presto repeats itself again
in stark contrast to its structured antecedant and what follows.
Finally the Allegretto, sunny and bright as compared to the
mysterious mood that has preceded it, is again broken by a
passionate run in the same manner as before. One must exper-
ience this piece to appreciate its quality, but the sharply
defined moods that alternate in an arbitrary fashion are, to
be sure, unusual and highly suggestive of its Spiritual
derivation.

Lastly, it is in the incredible spiritual and emotional
world of Beethoven that the musical principle finds its deep-
est and fullest expression. One need only listen to the Op-
ening phrases of the PATHETIQUE to know that this music moves
from the deepest realms of subjective experience to the high—
est level Of universal understanding--a synthesis of beauty
and form that transcends its powerful pathos. Although Bee-

thoven himself was far too original and unorthodox in

164

respect to form to pinpoint the working out of Bach's princi-
ple, it is here that the song without words is most clearly
heard. Here, knowledge and feeling merge to become not ideas

'alone, or feeling alone, but what Sullivan calls a ”state of

soul."11

Interestingly, Beethoven's mannerisms at improvisation are
strikingly reminiscent of C. P. E. Bach. v Czerny has giv-
en us an eyewitness account:

His improvisation was most brilliant and striking.
In whatever company he might chance to be, he knew
how to produce such an effect upon every hearer that
frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would
break out into loud sobs; for there was something
wonderful in his expression in addition to the beau-
ty and originality of his ideas and his spirited
style and rendering of them.12

'And, again, Ignaz von Seyfried, a Viennese conductor, de-
scribes Beethoven in a kind of mystical rapture during an
improvisation:

In his improvisations even then Beethoven did not
deny his tendency toward the mysterious and gloomy.
When once he began to revel in_the infinite world

of tones, he was transported also above all earthly
things; his spirit had burst all restricting bonds,
shaken off the yoke of servitude, and soared trium-
phantly and jubilantly into the luminous spaces of
the higher aether. Now his playing tore along like
a wildly foaming cataract, and the conjurer con- .
strained his instrument to an utterance so forceful
that the stoutest structure was scarcely able to
withstand it; and anon he sank down, exhausted, ex-
haling gentle plaints, dissolving in melancholy.
Again the spirit would soar aloft, triumphing over
transitory terrestrial sufferings, turn its glance
upwards in reverent sounds and find rest and comfort
on the innocent bosom of holy nature. But who shall
sound the depths of the sea? It was the mystical
Sanscrit language whose hieroglyphs can be read only
by the initiated. Wolff,, on the contrary, trained
in the school of MOzart, was always equable; never
superficial but always clear and thus more accessible
to the multitude. He used art only as a means to an
end, never to exhibit his acquirements. He always

165

enlisted the interest of his hearers and inevitably

compelled them1§o follow the progression of his well-

ordered ideas.

However, Beethoven's mannerisms in performance of his im-
provisations are not the key to his relationship to Each.
One aspect of his music stands out above all others, and that
is its intensely personal nature. Beethoven's music, what-
ever the dedication or whomever the patron, is the expres-
sion of his own experience of an individual who coped with
great sorrow and pain in his lifetime. Yet he transformed
that experience into great beauty and the universality that
invites the rest of mankind to share in both his suffering
and his transcendant nobility and joy. Beethoven's last
sonatas appear to spring from Jung's

racial memory . . . referring to some forgotten and

alien despair . . . this is hardly human suffering;

it is more like a memory4from some ancient and star-

ess night of the soul.

It is in this wordless articulation that Beethoven owes his

debt to Each. Like that composer, Beethoven frequently puz-

zled-his contemporaries who found him to be far-fetched and

inexplicable. The ALLGEMEINE MUSIKALISCHE ZEITUNG of Leipzig

 

wrote in 1799 that

The reviewer, who had no previous knowledge of this
composer's piano music must confess, after working
with great effort through these entirely personal
Sonatas, overladen with uncommon difficulties, that
his feeling on playing them really fluently and stren-
uously was that of a man who desired to wander with

a congenial friend through a pleasant wood, but was
constantly impeded by tangled undergrowth, eventu-
ally emerging weary and exhausted, without pleasure.
It is undeniable that Herr van Beethoven goes his

own way; but what a bizarre and painful way it is!
Full of scholarship and again scholarship, but no
nature, no real singing is in here! If one considers
this music carefully, one finds only a mass material

166

without good method; obstinacy in which one feels
little interest, a striving after unusual modula-
tion, a contempt of normal relationships, a heaping
up of difficulty upon difficultys which make one
lose all patience and pleasure.

Another source of this confusion about the keyboard mu-
sic of Beethoven had to do with the very fragmentation, or
sectionalism, or contrast of effect that we have found in
Bach. Another contemporary critic, Tomasek, wrote that

I listened to Beethoven's artistic work with more

composure. I admired his powerful and brilliant

playing, but his frequent daring deviations from

one motive to another, whereby the organic connec-

tion, the gradual development of ideas was broken

up, did not escape me. Evils of this nature fre-

quently weaken his greatest compositions, those which

sprang from a too exuberant conception. It is not
seldom that the unbiased listener is rudely awakened
from his transport. The singular and original seemed

to be his chief aim in composition, as is confirmed

by the answer which he made to a lady who asked him

if he Often attended Mozart's operas. 'I do not know

them', he replied [an exaggeration, he knew several],

'and do not care to hear the music of others lest I

forfeit some of my originality'.

One could certainly go on with this. We know that one of
the most amazing facets of Beethoven's genius was his pen-
chant for building upon the simplest of themes, and that
he loved thematic variation in both his orchestral and key-
board works. We also recognize that another source of his
originality was to emulate Bach's tricky tonality, such as op-
ening a work not in its own key but one closely related, ar-
riving at the home key only by a circuitous route. Of
course, the matter of Beethoven's daring modulations are
well known, and anyone who has played his mature sonatas

feels the incredible drama that comes from his chord usage.

We find chords that stand on their own as dramatic devices

167

rather than within the harmonic scheme of the musical line,
just as we saw in Bach.17
However, in the long run it is in the spiritual realm,
as Shedlock has said, that we find the essential connection.
Building upon the aesthetic and expressive potential of Bach's
musical principle, Beethoven brought it to its dramatic and
subjective heights. Above all, we have the dialectic of the
mind and the heart at its most sublime. One could not possib—
1y point to any one work or any single keyboard piece to sub—
stantiate this. It runs throughout Beethoven's music as a
thread. Whether it is the ethereal op. 111 of the late sona-
tas, or the transcendant op. 135, the F Major, of the late
quartets, we have here the ultimate realization of Bach's
"song without words." Here music becomes philosophy, the
expression of thoughts and ideas so universal, poignant, and
true, that language alone would be inadequate to convey them.
There is another reward, however, for the study of these
musical works in which we find ourselves deeply drawn into
that special place already cited in the quote from Beethoven,
where the intellect and the feelings, the mind and the heart
meet. Bach's own deeper purpose was to find new ways in which
music could serve as a vehicle for expression of the deepest,
most personal, most subjective feelings of the artist. He
must respond to the imperatives of his aesthetic being, his
own unique genius, and not the needs and demands of a social
or political institution whether that be court, church, or
the tastes of the public whom he also serves. In this sense,

Bach belonged to a small but seminal set of eighteenth

168
century artists who began to wrestle with the problem of the
individual and his place in society and with subjective forms
of expression as they conflict with formal and objective
criteria in art. In short, we are dealing with one aspect
of the subjective-objective clash that defines the special
dialectic of the modern world.

Considering this dialectic, we begin to appreciate the
special quality of Bach's Fantasias with their wonderful
synthesis of spontaneity and form, imagination and theory,
soulful expression and careful unity within the musical
structure. Here we have the problem of the creative and
unique individual who must reconcile the prerogative of
the inner directives with the need to conform to the outer
directives of employers, social instituitons, and that anath-
ema to originality in art, public taste.

We know from what little we have of Bach's own personal
feelings in writing on this issue that he experienced this
conflict in a most direct fashion. During his tenure at the
court of Frederick the Great, he was constricted by the
King's conservative taste. Frederick, like his model, Louis
XIV, exercised the privileges of absolutism in every area
of his domain including the cultural life of the court. Each
was able to assert his penchant for the new and innovative
only privately, and with a certain amount of risk to his
position at the court. As Burney tells us,

Of all the musicians who have been in the service

of Prussia for more than thirty years, Carl Philipp

Emanuel Bach and Francis Benda have perhaps been the
only two who dared to have a style of their own; the

169

rest are imitators, even Quantz and Graun . . . Of

his Majesty's two favourites, the one is languid, and

the other frequently common and insipid, and yet their

names are religion in Berlin, and more sworn to than

those of Luther and Calvin . . . for though a universal

toleration prevails here as in different sects

of Christians, yet, in music, whoever dares to pos-

sess any other tenets than those of Graun and Quantz

is sure to be persecuted.

Later, when Bach escaped the cultural rigors of the court,-
enjoying the relative freedom of the port city of Hamburg,
he was still restricted by the solid but conservative ambiance
of the German burgher class. On two occasions, he confided
to Burney that Hamburg was a desolate place for music in the
late century, having left its glorious days of creativity
behind. Like his father before him, C. P. E. Bach's duties
were so heavy as to be almost crushing to private and creative
growth. He was not only Cantor of the Latin School, but also
had to compose music for Hamburg's five major churches. On
one visit to Hamburg, Burney attended a performance of Bach's

music to a small and inattentive audience. On the way home

Bach remarked,

Adieu music! These are good people for society, and

I enjoy more tranquility and independence here than

at a court; after I was fifty, I gave the thing up,

and said let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!

And I am now reconciled to my situation; except in-

deed, when I meet with men of taste and discernment,19

who deserve better music than we can give them here.

This despair was all the more poignant in light of the fact
that Hamburg had at one time been a flowing center for music
in Germany. It had been home of the brilliant Telemann. who
finally moved to the warmer, sunnier, and more sensual climate

of Italy,and the heart of German opera. Now, however, Bach

170
saw the greatest dayscfi?music supplanted by the mediocre taste
of an evolving middle-class society. Once again he found him-
self apologizing to Burney for the state of music in his native
city,

You have come fifty years too late . . . here I am,

reconciled to my position except when I meet men of

taste and intellect who can appreciate better music

than that we produce here; then I blush for myself

and for my good friends, the Hamburgers.20

However, the subjective-objective conflict extends beyond
the unique problem in eighteenth century Germany of the artist
constricted by its social conservatism. Inevitably, the real
conflict is personal, psychological, and timeless. Through-
out history the tension between subjective needs against
social demands has always required the most sensitive recon-
ciliation. It is here that the deeper problem of balance
manifests itself, and we have the most to learn from Bach's
empfindsamkeit.

We have found his Fantasias to be an ingenious reconcili-
ation between freedom and discipline, spontaneity and form,
harmonic language and personal expression. They remain re-
levant today as we wrestle with a similar clash between what
the subjective being desires and what the social being must
repress. Not even in today's cultural climate which enshrines
individuality can any person afford to forget the outer con-
straints of the Objective world. We must all learn to find
the delicate place in which our primeval,libidinous, and per-
sonal needs reconcile themselves with the good of society,

family, institutions of political and cultural stability.

Despite the more liberal environment of today's world we

171
are threatened with loss of identity, the dehumanizing poten-
tial of a technological society. Now, more than ever we are
faced with a crisis of self in a society that engenders con-
formity as in the Hamburg of the beleaguered composer.

Here then is the wonderful lesson to be learned from study
and playing of the Fantasias of C. P. E. Bach. Projecting
ourselves into the creative world of the musician, we find that
Bach, the man of the late eighteenth century, explored the
timeless problem of integrating the outer and inner worlds of
the individual. In wrestling with new musical forms, he paved
the way for other musicians, especially Beethoven, who have
given us music of deeply personal origins, yet great beauty
and form. In this respect, it was his followers rather than
Bach himself who devised the means by which the beauty and
order of art transcend human suffering and sorrow. However,

Bach's empfindsamkeit remains an important guide to music as

 

the pathway to personal expression in terms of performance and
interpretation. Bach preserved the improvisational freedom
of the earlier period in music that has been either misunder-
stood or forgotten today. His Fantasias and the musical prin—
ciple they incorporate should be included in the training of
young musicians today when technical facility and note-perfect
performance, so important in winning today's coveted competi-
tions, obscure true musicality. We still have much to learn
from Bach's intuitive integrity and his freedom in conposition.
Outside of the realm of music, we find that Bach's integra-
tion of the rational and emotional in his Fantasias retain
their powerful effect. Today as much as any time in history,

we need this inspiration and guidance, learning that the

172
lessons of the rational mind must be amended by the percep-
tions that come only from the instincts and the intuitions.

In conclusion, we have even yet a great lesson to learn
from the Fantasias of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Understand-
ing them in their totality, we come to understand the model
for totality of the psychological being that realizes its ful-
lest development. They teach us that emotions must be recog-
nized and dealt with, and that the spontaneous and the ima-
ginative are essential ingredients in understanding, as in
art. _We learn that life and art both are better balanced when

one "plays from the soul, and not like a trained bird."23

FOOTNOTES

Epilogue

1'Prunieres, Henry, A NEW HISTORY OF MUSIC, translated by
Edward Lockspeiser, New York, The Macmillan Co., 1943.

2'Landon, H. C. Robbin, ed., THE COLLECTED CORRESPONDENCE
AND LONDON NOTEBOOKS OF JOSEPH HAYDN, Barrie and Rockliff,
London, 1959, pp. 75 and 76.

3'Nohl, Louis, LIFE OF HAYDN, translated by George P. Upton,
A. C. McClure and Co., Chicago, 1889, pp. 28 and 29.

4'ibid., p. 32.

5'ibid., p. 33.

6'Rosen, Charles, THE CLASSICAL STYLE. Although Rosen does
not consider the keyboard works here, he makes the point that
the major difference between the modulations of Bach and of
Haydn is that the former will return to the tonic via a cir-
cuitous route, while the latter returns in a more logical and
orderly fashion, p. 112.

7'op. cit., Nohl, p. 31.

8'Shedlock, J. 5., B. A., THE PIANOFORTE SONATA, ITS ORIGIN
AND DEVELOPMENT, Methuen and Co., London, 1895, p. 115.

9’ibid., p. 114.

10'Mersmann, ed., LETTERS OF WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART, trans-
lated by M. M. Boxman, Dover Publications, Inc., New York,
1972. p. 228.

11'Sullivan, J. W. N., BEETHOVEN, HIS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT,
Vintage Books, Random House, New York, 1970, p. 82.

12'Orga, Ates, BEETHOVEN, HIS LIFE AND TIMES, Midas Books and
The Two Continent Publishing Company, New York and London,
1978, p. 52.

13’ibid., p. 58.

14'Jung, Carl G., ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY, ITS THEORY AND PRAC-
TICE, Vintage Books, New York, 1968, p. 44.

15'op. cit., Orga, p. 56.
ls'ibid., p. 58.
17.

Another advantage of the awareness of Bach's aesthetic as
it appears in Beethoven, is in the matter of performance,

173

174

already alluded to in the introduction to this study. We
cannot know for certain the particulars of Beethoven's dyna-
mics, or exactly how his keyboard music would have sounded

if we had been there at the time of performance. We do have
eyewitness accounts, already cited in this chapter, but, a-
gain, we are relying on second-hand information. Only when
we try to understand and imagine for ourselves the aesthetic
orientation of Beethoven, can we do what Beethoven would

have wished—~not simply copy his performance, but understand
the deeper meaning of the music, and interpret it via our

own aesthetic and intellectual mechanisms. Understanding

the principle of exaggerated and sharply defined contrasts,
as seen in Bach, and as emulated by Beethoven, is of great
importance to modern performers and listeners alike. Recent-
ly, in a performance of Beethoven at the University of Oregon,
the Muir Quartet emphasized these contrasts and juxtaposed
moods in such a way that it offended some of the faculty, who
were accustomed to a smoother, more elegant musical line, and
to whom this performance seemed too jarring and fragmented in
the phrasing. With a better understanding of the aesthetic
principle so important to late eighteenth century German
composers, we can reach a new understanding of what is authen-
tic, and amend the tendency to smooth out and polish the
phrasing of the classical period to the extent that it loses
its proper drama and intensity.

18'Burney, Charles, THE PRESENT STATE OF MUSIC IN GERMANY,
THE NETHERLANDS, AND UNITED PROVINCES, Second Edition, London,
T. Beckett, 1775, p. 231.

19'ibid., p. 251.

2°°ibia:,;p,.252..
21“For more discussion of this problem, and its affect on
Goethe and the "sturm and drang" movement, see my paper on
THE SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF GOETHE'S SORROWS OF
YOUNG WERTHER.

22'Eliot, T. 8., THE WASTELAND, from THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF
AMERICAN VERSE, Richard Ellmann, ed., Oxford University Press,
New York, 1976, p. 595.

23'Eliot, T..S., THE LOVE SONG OF T. ALFRED PRUFROCK, ibid.,
p. 586.

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178

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Heger, Theodore E., MUSIC OF THE CLASSIC PERIOD, Wm. C. Brown
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182

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183

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Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1963.

ARTICLES

Barford, Paul T., THE SONATA PRINCIPLE: A STUDY OF MUSICAL
THOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, Music Review, XIII
November, 1952.

184

- Clorex, 8., LA FORME DU RONDO CHEZ C. P. E. BACH, Revue de
Musicologie, XVI, 1935

Dahms, Walter, THE GALANT STYLE OF MUSIC, Musical Quarterly,
XI, 1925, translated by Baker, Theodore.

Eschmann, Karl, THE SONS OF BACH-STRUCTURAL DESIGN, Music
Teachers National Association Volume of Proceedings, 43rd
Series, 73rd year, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 1951.

Friedman, Arthur, Essay in THE AUGUSTAN MILIEU, Rothstein,
Eric and Rousseau, G. 8., ed., Oxford, 1970.

Helm, Eugene, THE HAMLET FANTASIA AND THE LITERARY ELEMENT
IN C. P. E. BACH'S MUSIC from The Musica1_gparter1y, Volume
58 #2, April, 1972.

Mersmann, Hans, EIN PROGRAMMTRIO KARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH,
BACHS-JAHRBUCH, XIII, 1917.

 

Newmann, William S. CONCERNING THE ACCOMPANIED CLAVIER SONATA,
Musical Quarterly, Volume 33, No. 3, July, 1947.

Plamenac, D., NEW LIGHT ON THE LAST YEARS OF C. P. E. BACH,
Musical Quarterly, Volume 35, October, 1949.

 

Rousseau, G. 8., SCIENCE AND THE DISCOVERY OF IMAGINATION IN
ENLIGHTENED ENGLAND, Eighteenth Century Studies, Volume III
1964. See pp. 108-135.

Spingarn, J. 5., THE ORIGINS OF MODERN CRITICISM, Modern
Philology, Volume I, No. 4, April, 1904. See pp. 559-536.

 

Sutherland, Gordon, THE SONS OF BACH-TEXTURE, MTNA Volume
of Proceedings, 43rd Series, 73rd Year, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania,
1949.

UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL

Professor Owen Jandor of Wellesley College has a book in pro-
gress on the subject of Beethoven's keyboard dialogue in
the Andante of his 4th Concerto

Bach, C. P. E., KEYBOARD CONCERTOS, Stevens, Jane, Ph.D.,
Yale, microfilm - #262, Humanities, 1965.

Tishkoff, Doris, THE SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF
GOETHE'S SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER.

185
MUSICAL SCORES
SECHS NEVE SONATINEN 1787, Wotquerine 53.

Kalmus, Edwin F., Publisher, C. P. E. BACH, SONATAS, FANTASIAS
AND RONDOS FOR PIANO SOLO, VOlumes I and II.

     

 
 
  

  

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