Problems in Sonata HistoryAuthor(s): William S. NewmanSource: Bulletin of the American Musicological Society, No. 11/12/13 (Sep., 1948), pp. 49-50Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/829285 .

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PHILADELPHIA CHAPTER 49

Some Musical Aspects of the English Court Masque Otto Gombosi (MW)

(APRIL, 1946)

[To be published in the JOURNAL OF THE AMS] [Note: No meetings were held by the Northwestern Chapter in 1947.]1

PHILADELPHIA CHAPTER

[Note: No meetings of the Philadelphia Chapter took place during 1945. On April 15, 1946 the chapter attended a concert of medieval and renaissance music pre- sented in Haverford College by Yves Tinayre, Baritone, and the American Society of Ancient Instruments, Ben Stad, Founder and Director. No meetings were held during I947.1

SOUTHEASTERN CHAPTER

Problems in Sonata History William S. Newman (SE)

(JANUARY 19, 1945) IN ITS LARGEST SENSE the sonata embraces virtually all the important in- strumental form types since the late renaissance. Though in that sense it is itself the most important instrumental form type, there is still no adequate general history of the sonata. This is a conspicuous gap in music literature. The few attempts at such a history all date before

900oo, that is, before the bulk of important sonata research was done. Since no later attempt has been made to digest the recent research, these

nineteenth-century attempts continue to serve as the basis for many of the general sonata summaries that now appear in reference works or general music histories. Unfortunately, the sonatas chosen for analysis by the nineteenth-century writers are almost always the same ones, the main reason being that these were the works that happened to be re- printed in three or four widely circulated, generally accessible anthol- ogies. To this day, the familiar conception of the sonata is the rich evolutionary hypothesis formulated in the nineteenth century from such very meager and miscellaneous evidence.

That a real sonata history has not yet been written is partly be- cause of certain chronic obstacles. In the first place, the subject does in fact cover nearly all instrumental music. A sonata history must be something less than a general history and something more than a monograph. If it is to cover the important musical uses of the word sonata it must go back to the French wind-instrument sonnades of the renaissance, carry on with the early baroque orchestral, chamber, and solo string sonatas, the late baroque trio sonatas, the beginnings,

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50 BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

full bloom and decadence of the true classic sonata, the various shades of the romantic sonata, plus recent and present trends.

Such a work must deal with the history both of sonata form-the architecture of the school sonata, so to speak-and of the sonata cycle- the sequence of contrasting movements. If the spirit, not just the letter, of sonata form is to be conveyed, then all the allied types like the sym- phony, quartet, and concerto must be discussed whenever they have a bearing. If the sonata as a cycle of movements is to be adequately treated, then the sky is the limit, for there is no form type-variations, fugue, rondo, or what not-that is not commonly found in the sonata.

Finally, to prepare a general sonata history a prodigious quantity of sonata literature, both musical and musicological must be surveyed. Nearly every musician has tried his hand at a sonata. Charles Burney wrote sonatas, so did Carl Czerny, Richard Wagner, Percy Goetschius, Peter Tchaikovsky, and Charles Seeger. Many musicians have written about the sonata. One of the most popular subjects for monographs in

Germany, that land of monographs, has been so-and-so als Sonaten-

komponist. When it comes to the origins of classic sonata form and style, few

other musical subjects have so many contenders for first honors. Ever since Hugo Riemann rediscovered Stamitz and the Mannheim School it has been the fashion for scholars each to unearth his own pet prot6g6 for whom he can claim hitherto unrecognized historical significance. Generally these finds prove to be remote composers with manuscripts or published works from the 1730's or 40's at the earliest which provide instances of a return to the main theme in the principal key or a rudi-

mentary use of some technique later perfected by Beethoven. Needless to say, the author's perspective is often distorted by his zeal and en- thusiasm. More significant factors in sonata origin like the influence of Italian opera are sometimes quite overlooked. But this is not to belittle the value of these finds. In the end they will correct that nineteenth-

century conception of sonata history which assigns the highest im-

portance before the classic sonata to Johann Kuhnau, Domenico Scar-

latti, and Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

The Brahms-Joachim Exercises in Counterpoint Leonard Ellinwood (SE)

(FEBRUARY 19, 1945, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

As UNIQUE in the annals of music history as their friendship is the ex-

change of studies in counterpoint carried on by Brahms and Joachim

during their late twenties. First suggested by Brahms in a letter of

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