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KMBB L6
Two 18th-Century Aesthetic Concepts
for Keyboard Music: ‘Character’ and
‘Oration’
Mozart on the resemblance of his Sonata
in C, K. 309/ii (1777) to Rosa Cannabich
‘[Johann Christian Cannabich’s] daughter, who is 15
[sic] ... Is a very pretty, pleasing girl. She has
great sense for her age, and an engaging
demeanor; she is rather grave and does not talk
much, but what she does say is always amiable
and good natured. ... The andante ... She
executed with the greatest possible feeling ...
Young Danner asked me how I intended to
compose the andante, “Entirely in accordance
with Madlle. Rosa’s character”, said I. ... And it
really is so; she is just like the andante’.
Francoise Couperin (1668-1733)
Organist at St. Gervais (Paris, 1685), Royal Chapel
(1693), Court organist and composer (1717)
*L’art de toucher le clavecin* (The art of playing the
harpsichord) (1716)
*Pieces de clavecin* (Harpsichord pieces), four
volumes (1713, 1717, 1722, 1730), arranged not
as suites of dances, but as ‘orders’ of dance
movements and titled/descriptive pieces.
Fr. Couperin, Pieces de clavecin, 1
(1713), preface
‘I have always had an object in composing all of
these pieces... the titles correspond to the
ideas that I have had; I may be excused for not
rendering an account of them. However, since
among these titles there are some that seem
to flatter me [because they refer to
aristocrats], it is well to point out that the
pieces that bear them are a kind of portraits,
which have sometimes been found good
likenesses under my fingers ...’
E.g. Book 1, order 5, ‘La tendre Fonchon’
refers to the singer Francoise Moreau
Imitative Subjects in Couperin
Passions/sentiments: ‘Les sentiments’ (Book 1)
Sounds/music: ‘Le Carillon de Cithere’ (Book 3)
People: ‘La Couperin’ (Book 4) [= La piece
Couperin, rather than a female Couperin]
Abstract or ambiguous: ‘Les ombres errantes’
(Book 4)
Animals (or a nickname?): ‘L’amphibie’ (Book 4)
Scenes: ‘Les bergeries’ (Book 2)
The Principal of Imitation
‘Music’, in Couperin’s keyboard works doesn’t appear
‘alone’ – through titles, it evokes something outside
the piece, be that a person, an object, an idea from the
imagination, or just a type of music/dance.* This
reflects his social context where music formed part of
aristocratic salons. ‘Portraits’ and ‘characters’ were
fashionable literary genres. (See Fuller, ‘Of Portraits,
“Sapho” and Couperin’, M&L 78/2 (1997): 149-74).
It also represents an aesthetic principle of ‘the imitation
of nature’ that united the arts – but which proved
difficult for instrumental music. (Recall that the
debates over canon made reference to different
conceptions of ‘Nature’).
Shifting Focus of Musical Imitation
‘Mimesis’ was variously understood by 18thC
musicians to refer to the imitation of the natural
world (e.g. Storms), gesture and dance steps, and
human character, the latter winning out in the
course of the 18th century.
The shift towards imitation of human character (a
set of defining sentiments) is evident in the 24
character pieces of C. P. E. Bach, composed 175457 – all of which refer to his Berlin friends, none
to more abstract or fanciful objects.
Contexts of CPEB’s Character Pieces
The Berlin court was Francophile: Friedrich’s rococo
palace in Potsdam, built approximately one decade
before Bach wrote his character pieces, was given the
French moniker “Sanssouci” (“carefree”). Surrounded
by French gardens, the palace contained the king’s
extensive collection of Jean-Antoine Watteau and
other French artists. Friedrich wrote predominantly in
French, invited French cultural figures to visit the court,
and expected artists, authors, and musicians under his
patronage to be familiar with French culture. Friedrich
Wilhelm Marpurg observed that: “Very many of our
most famous players admit that they have taken from
the French the preciseness of their performance.”
Fr. W. Marpurg’s Prompt*
‘Words have exercised more power over the singer
and his performance than people believe. ... With
instrumental pieces, however, this Ariadnian
guideline [sic = thread] drops away, and players
lose their way in the labyrinth of a more or less
extravagant performance, according to whether
they have many embellishments in their heads,
their throats, or their hands, and according to
whether they possess less or greater capability of
comprehending the true sense of the piece.’
Cont.
‘French character pieces largely preclude such
[extravagant performance], and one would
wish that it weren’t considered sufficient, in
all compositions in the new style, to set
nothing more than the words “allegro” or
“adagio” at the head of a piece without giving
the player more explicit information about the
inner nature and distinctiveness of this
particular Adagio ...’*
C. P. E. Bach, ‘La Gleim’, H. 89
In A minor, has two parts. The first follows the
French Rondeau with three episodes
(couplets) – tonic, relative major, dominant
minor. The fourth (in A major) is titled “II.
Partie” and is followed by the refrain written
out with a little coda. So it is an extended
version of the Baroque model that CPEB knew
from Francoise Couperin.
Gleim’s Character
We happen to know a fair bit about Johann Wilhelm
Ludwig Gleim (1719-1803), a poet (set by CPEB). He
was said to be extremely refined, kind-hearted, and
sensitive. His first collection of poetry, Essay in playful
songs (1744) was light, sentimental, amorous and
playful (Anacreontic). In his home in Halberstadt, he
contrived a ‘Temple of Friendship’ in which he
displayed his collection of portraits and prints.
Based on CPEB’s representation, Gleim was slightly
melancholic (refrain); given to mood swings (the final A
major episode); graceful, elegant (grazioso), refined,
with quicksilver emotions (in each couplet the
emotions, and their intensity, fluctuate and change).*
Gleim, by Johann Heinrich Ramberg
(1789)
A Broader Phenomenon: Johann Jacob Engel,
‘Painting in Music’ (1780)*
‘Engel likens the composer to a Tonkünstler, a tone artist, who
paints Empfindungen with musical notes. The composer
represents sensibility by manipulating such elements as
key, rhythm, melody, and harmony to cause vibrations in
the nervous system of the listener, whose feelings the
composer may imagine being played upon, as an
instrument. These vibrations trigger what he calls
“passionate imaginings,” and the same sensibilities the
composer wishes to represent in his subject are conjured in
the soul of the listener. In Engel’s terms, a listener imagines
the subject of a character piece or musical portrait by
listening empathetically and recognizing the passions it
represents ...’
Waldon, ‘Composing Character’, MQ (2009).
What about music’s temporal
organisation?
The notion of musical portraits or character
pieces gets at music’s power of representation
but has less to say about how music is
organised temporally. Indeed, in listening to
K. 309/ii it seems both necessary, but also a
little like special pleading, to ‘hear’ the
progress of the piece as a story of Rosa
Cannabich’s unfolding feelings. So how was
music’s temporal organisation
conceptualised?
A favoured metaphor: music as oration
Musical ‘form’ was generally conceptualised not in
architectural or spatial terms, nor even quite so
abstractly as a set of harmonic and thematic
events following conventional patterns, but under
the heading of ‘oration’: music was an ‘address’ –
like a speech or sermon – to an audience. Thus
the ultimate questions were: is it moving and
persuasive; and, specifically, is it ‘about’
something – is it focused and intelligible. The
metaphor of oration throws weight onto
perception and on the technique by which the
composer elaborates a main ‘theme’ or ‘subject’.
Francesco Galeazzi, ‘TheoreticalPractical Elements of Music’ (1796)*
‘The Motive, then, is nothing but the principal
idea of the melody—the subject or theme,
one might say, of the musical discourse–and
the whole composition must revolve around it
... It must be well rounded and lucid, for, being
the theme of the discourse, if it is not well
understood, the discourse that follows will not
be understood either’ (89).
Galeazzi’s on ‘laying out the melodies’
of a musical discourse
Part 1
1. Introduction 2. principal motive 3. second
motive 4. departure to the most closely
related keys 5. characteristic passage 6.
cadential period 7. coda
Part 2
1. Motive 2. modulation 3. reprise 4. repetition
of the characteristic passage 5. repetition of
the cadential period 6. repetition of the coda
Perceptible relationships between
ideas, not ‘purely musical’ unity
‘The introduction is ... a preparation for the true
Motive’
‘The second Motive ... is either derived from the
first motive or is entirely new, but, well
connected with the first, immediately follows the
period [cadence] of the Motive’
‘The departure from the key ... Should end in the
fifth of the key in which it is actually set [that is,
the new key], so that the following period may
emerge with more prominence and individuality’
Cont.
‘The characteristic passage is a new idea ...
introduced... for the sake of greater beauty. This
must be gentle, expressive, and tender ...’
‘The cadential period ... is a new idea, but it is
always dependent on previous ideas ... It will
display animation and skill, with agility of voice or
hand’
‘The coda is ... a prolonging of the cadence ... it
links the ideas which end the first part with those
which have begun it, or with those with which
the second part begins’.
Cont.
Galeazzi then proceeds through the second part,
which is essentially as we would expect (he
mentions the transposition of material in the
secondary key). He ends by praising a ‘beautiful
device’ in the coda: ‘to recapitulate in the Coda
the motive of the first part, or the introduction ...
Or some other passage that is both remarkable
and well suited to end with; this produces a
wonderful effect, reviving the idea of the Theme
of the composition and bringing together its
parts’.
Application to K. 309/i
Can you locate the ‘parts’ of part 1 in the exposition
– does the music want to fall out in this way?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of
understanding this movement in Galeazzi’s
terms?
How does topic fit in, if at all?
Is this movement also a portrait or imitation of
anything? Can we reconcile ‘character’ and
‘oration’?