Towards Classicism — CPE Bach, Benda, Mozart and Haydn
Dr Lara James wrote the following programme note for the AAM’s performances in February–March 2006, directed by Giuliano Carmignola.
CPE Bach, Benda and Berlin
‘Of all the musicians which have been in the service of Prussia, for more than thirty years, Carl.P.E. Bach and Francis Benda have, perhaps, been the only two who dared to have a style of their own; the rest are imitators; even Quantz and Graun, who have been so much imitated, formed themselves upon the works of Vinci and Vivaldi.’(Charles Burney, The Present State of Music in Germany,
the Netherlands and United Provinces, 1775.)
Charles Burney was not the first to recognise the exceptional nature of two of the Berlin court’s long-serving musicians. CPE Bach was the leading harpsichordist and teacher of his day, referred to by contemporaries as ‘the great Bach’. Franz Benda had received a chorister’s training, yet made his name as a violinist. Described by Scheibe as ‘the father of the German school of violin playing’, his influence lasted several generations. Brahms’ friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, acknowledged his debt to Benda by cutting his teeth on his sonatas and caprices.
The two composers spent a combined total of 81 years working at the Prussian court of Frederick the Great. An enthusiastic flautist, Frederick had made Berlin a centre of musical excellence. Sadly though, Bach was undervalued and underpaid by his patron whose rational Enlightenment ideas were at odds with Bach’s extravagant and emotional temperament. Benda enjoyed an easier relationship. His disposition, described by Burney as ‘plain’, ‘modest’ and ‘obliging’, enabled him to serve Frederick for 53 years.
Bach’s concern above all was to write music that would ‘touch the heart’ and ‘awaken the passions’. He was influenced in this attitude by the pre-romantic literary movement, ‘Sturm und Drang’. At that time, unity of ‘affect’ (mood or emotion) was considered desirable. Bach’s juxtaposition of starkly contrasting ideas was something new and looks forward to the classical style of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.
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CPE Bach, marooned in Berlin for nearly three decades, seethed with creative frustration. Restricted in his work by Frederick the Great’s singular taste for Italian music, he longed for a way out. This came in 1767 with the death of his godfather Telemann, who had held the post of music director of Hamburg’s five principal churches. Bach took up this post and was at last able to express himself without inhibition.
A stroke of fortune came with the visit to Hamburg of Baron Gottfried von Swieten, the Austrian Ambassador to Prussia and famous connoisseur of JS Bach and Handel. The Baron commissioned six String Symphonies urging the delighted composer to ‘give himself free rein without regard to the difficulties of execution which were bound to arise’.
At the time CPE Bach was writing, the symphony had not yet established its four-movement form. Berlin taste dictated a three-movement form which dispensed with the minuet, an idea encouraged by Johann Adam Hiller who believed minuets weakened the virility of other movements. He likened them to men of effeminate appearance with beauty patches on their faces! It is this more masculine three-movement form which CPE Bach adopts for his string symphonies.
The opening of Symphony No.1 in G major sets the tone for the group of works. After a bold statement of the tonic, the first movement begins with a serene legato idea. This lasts a mere five bars before being ousted by loud, vigorous semiquaver passages. Harmonically, the journey that ensues is unpredictable and passes through keys which might at first seem widely unrelated to what has gone before. The rollercoaster ride is heightened by hurtling scales, rapid string crossings and sudden plunges into silence. The violent juxtaposition of elements gives the music a powerful momentum, one that bursts with pent-up energy. Adding to the excitement, the second violins frequently join in unison to bolster the attacks of the first violins before breaking away. Changes such as these in the orchestral texture of the composition make for a richer palette of colour, and are echoed in a similar way by the entrances of the double bass and harpsichord.
The second movement proceeds without a break from the first, and it is only when this begins that the final B major chord (distantly related to the ‘home’ key of G major) of the previous movement is understood as the key of the new movement. The mood is calm although there are loud outbursts which in their humour anticipate Haydn. The buoyant finale ends on a note of triumph.
In Symphony No.4 in A major, CPE Bach again aims at a cyclical unity of form whereby the individual movements are linked and harmonically dependent. The mood is on the whole brighter and more playful than the first symphony. Virtuosity abounds, there being no regard to difficulties of technique. Some of the tonalities through which the music passes betray a roguish sense of humour. Keys such as G sharp, F sharp, C sharp and D sharp were not frequently used at this time due to tuning problems. As individual keys were associated with particular emotions these unusual tonalities would have conjured up whole new areas of feeling.
Frederick regarded Franz Benda as one of the principal performers in his Kapelle, appointing him leader of the orchestra in 1771. He also employed two of Benda’s brothers, three of his sons, his son-in-law (Johann Friedrich Reichardt), and two nephews. All were violinists!
Benda’s Violin concerto in D minor dates from before 1762 and was almost certainly destined for performance at court. A version for flute in E minor seems to have been conceived simultaneously and intended for Frederick to play. The work is interesting for its range of influences, old and new. The orchestral writing pays homage to the Italian Baroque, and particularly Vivaldi, whose concertos Benda had studied. Other elements, such as the minor key, the angular shapes of the first movement theme, sudden and frequent changes from loud to soft and the dotted rhythms look forward to the ‘Sturm und Drang’.
The Adagio is often central to Benda’s works, and it is in this area that he most excelled. Numerous accounts testify to his ability to perform slow movements, frequently citing the ‘noble singing quality’ and bell-like sound which he was able to draw from his violin. In this F major movement, a simple framework is transformed into a highly ornate melodic line through the insertion of rhythmically intricate embellishments. This is just one of hundreds of important examples Benda left on how to ornament a melody.
Mozart and Haydn
With Haydn and Mozart the Classical style came to fruition. One of its glories, sonata form, enabled composers to weld disparate elements into a unified whole, reaching its formal height in Haydn’s string quartets and symphonies. Mozart, with his particular genius for expression, fused tragic passion with rococco elegance in some of his minor key works. A generation apart, the mutual respect between these two composers was immense. Mozart called Haydn his teacher and best friend. Haydn famously said to Mozart’s father, Leopold; ‘I tell you before God, and as an honest man, that your son is the greatest composer I know, either personally or by reputation: he has taste and moreover the greatest possible knowledge of the science of composing.’
The majority of Haydn’s concertos date from his early years at Esterhazy and were written for talented musicians in his orchestra. The Violin concerto in C major, from the early 1760s, was written for the leader Luigi Tomasini whose playing style stemmed from Tartini. Tomasini’s brilliant technique and beautiful tone inspired the composer to write in the Italian style. He chose, for example, the three-movement concerto form with a ritornello structure. Baroque sequences, dotted figures, frequent leaps of a 10th and rapid string crossings all derive from the Italian concerto tradition as perfected by Vivaldi. Challenging technical passages employing double stops, broken chord triplets and high position work would have displayed Tomasini’s virtuosity.
In the early 1780s, Mozart immersed himself in the practice of writing fugues. Invited by Baron von Swieten to study scores at his apartment in Vienna, the composer wrote to his father: ‘Every Sunday at 12 noon I go to Baron von Suiten — and there nothing but Handel and Bach is played. I am making a collection of Bach fugues — not only Sebastian’s but Emanuel and Friedeman Bach’s — also Handel’s’. One of the products of 1782 was the magnificent C minor fugue for two pianos. Abounding in contrapuntal devices, it refers directly to A Musical Offering, a composition JS Bach wrote for Frederick the Great when visiting CPE Bach in 1747. The Adagio and Fugue in C minor combines this fugue, orchestrated for string orchestra, with an intense Adagio added in 1788. The Adagio’s disquieting harmonies and textures create an instability resolved by the Fugue’s inexorable logic.
Quite different is Mozart’s Divertimento in D major, written when the composer was sixteen and living in Salzburg. This music, designed to divert and delight, would have been intended for a family celebration — perhaps a birthday or name-day. Divertimenti were frequently performed outdoors in the warm summer months of 1770s Salzburg. The number of players varied greatly according to the importance of the occasion; when finances were limited, this piece could be performed by just four players. Always light-hearted, this Divertimento exudes brilliance and optimism. The final Presto, in which Mozart teases the listener with metrical and phrasing ambiguities, has been described as ‘one of the happiest movements ever written.’