MUSC1050 Music in Society 1

Music of the Enlightenment

The Galant Style; C. P. E. Bach & Empfindsamkeit

Latin, ‘classicus’

Europe in the late 18th century

The Holy Roman Empire
Hapsburg Rulers:
Empress Maria Theresa (r. 1740–80) – reigned with her consort Francis I (1745–65); with her son
from 1765
Emperor Joseph II (r. 1780–90); Emperor Leopold II (r. 1791–92)

Within the Holy Roman Empire – countless autonomous kingdoms (many German-speaking)
Salzburg:
Prince-Archbishop Siegmund, Count von Schrattenbach (r. 1753–71); Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus,
Count von Colloredo (r. 1772–1801)
Prussia:
King Frederick ‘the Great’ (r. 1740–86); King Friedrich Wilhelm II (r. 1786–97), cello player, dedicatee
of Mozart’s last 3 string quartets

Outside Holy Roman Empire

France: the end of the ancien régime
1789 storming of the Bastille – Republic proclaimed 1792 – King executed 1793 – Reign of Terror
1793–4
Italian states: e.g. the Papal States (ruled from Rome); various principalities (e.g. Tuscany) . . .

The Enlightenment – ‘the Age of Reason’

England: Locke and Isaac Newton (1642–1727), Chamber’s Cyclopaedia (1728)
France: rationalists such as Voltaire (1694–1778) and Diderot, Encyclopédie (1751–72)

Alexander Pope (1688–1744), proposed epitaph for Newton in

1728:
Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! And all was light

Counter-currents:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750); Dictionnaire de musique (1768)
German movements: ‘Sturm und Drang’ (storm and stress) and Weimar Classicism
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805)

‘The Enlightened Despot’: an aristocrat who tried to exercise his or her authority humanely and
tempered by reason, e.g. Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine of Russia, Carl Theodor of the Palatinate
and Bavaria, and Joseph II of Vienna
Freemasonry

Diffusion of culture
Instructional books
Anon., The Modern Musick-Master or The Universal Musician (London, 1731)
 An Introduction to Singing after so easy a Method, that Persons of the meanest Capacities may (in a
short time) learn to Sing (in Tune) any Song that is set to Musick with A Choice Collection of Songs
for One, Two, or Three Voices, with a Thorough Bass to each by the most Eminent Masters of the
Age. Engravd, Printed and Sold at the Printing Office in Bow-Church Yard London, Where Books
of Instructions for any Single Instrument may be had.

J. J. Quantz, Versuch einer Anweisung die Flüte traversiere zu spielen (On playing the flute, Berlin, 1752).
Leopold Mozart, Versuch einder gründlichen Violinschule (Violin school, Augsburg, 1756)
C. P. E. Bach, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the true art of keyboard playing,
Part I, Berlin 1753; Part II, 1762).
Daniel Gottlob Türk, Klavierschule (Keyboard school, Leipzig & Halle, 1789)
Charles Burney, A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (London, 1776–89)

‘Pre-classical’ music
In the past, the style of concerted music was altogether unlike today’s. . . Melody was neither as free nor
as natural, and consequently less lively and flowing . . . It was neither as pleasant nor as moving and
expressive . . . Composers of the past who strove to exhibit their skill at counterpoint had to find room
for all kinds of devices; their music was laced through with fugues, canons, and similarly artificial
imitative procedures. The instruments weaved in and out and lost themselves amid incessant
suspensions. How could a free and intelligible melody find employment under such conditions?

This great man [J. S. Bach] would be the admiration of whole nations if he had more amenity, if he did
not take away the natural element in his pieces by giving them a turgid and confused style, and if he
did not darken their beauty by an excess of art.
Johann Adolf Scheibe (Criticus musicus, 1737)

Composition: “The art of inventing tunes and accompanying them with suitable harmonies.”
“To make two melodies at once is like having two speeches at once in order to be more forceful”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“In general his compositions for the piano forte are such as ladies can execute with little trouble.”
Charles Burney on the music of Johann (John) Christian Bach

The galant style

‘Being galant, in general’, wrote Voltaire, ‘means seeking to please’.
Leonardo Vinci (1690–1730)
Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783)
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736)
Charles Burney wrote that Vinci was the first to break away from the older style:
“by simplifying and polishing melody, and calling the attention of the audience chiefly to the voice-part,
by disentangling it from fugue, complication and laboured contrivance”
Mus. ex.: Hasse, Cleofide, Act II, scene 9 ‘Digli ch’io son fedele’

Rococo, from rocaille, ‘shellwork’

Jean-Marie Leclair (1697–1764)
Jean-Joseph de Mondonville (1711–72)
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764)
Mus. ex.: Jean-Marie Leclair, Badinage from Deuxième recréation de musique d’une exécution facile, op. 8 (c.
1737)
La Guerre/Querelle des Bouffons (‘War of the Buffoons’, Paris, 1752)
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736), La serva padrona (or ‘The Maid who would be Mistress’), Naples,
1733 (as a comic intermezzo to the opera Il prigionier superbo)

“The whole of Paris is divided into two camps which could hardly be more passionately concerned were
it a matter of religion or of state affairs” – Rousseau

Charles Burney on Pergolesi: “The child of taste and elegance and nursling of the graces”

Empfindsamkeit – the ‘Empfindsamer Stil’.

‘sensibility’ (in the 18th-century or Jane Austen sense, which derives from the French sensibilité),
‘Sentimental’ or ‘ultrasensitive’

C. P. E. Bach, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the true art of keyboard playing,
1753):
music’s main aims were to touch the heart and move the affections; to do this he specified that it was
necessary to play from the soul

Mus. ex.: C. P. E. Bach, Sonata in A major (W1.55/4), Poco adagio, 2nd movt, from Sechs Clavier-Sonaten
für Kenner und Liebhaber (Leipzig, 1779)