more characteristic standard of melody; to a wider range of harmony, and more perfect modelling and management of design, than had ever been attained by Italians. In all these things he enriched the art to an enormous extent, and left it more highly organised in nearly all its various departments than when he took it up.

CHAPTER XI

THE MIDDle stage OF "SONATA" FORM

THE principles upon which self-dependent instrumental music was being developed during the greater part of the eighteenth century were quite new to mankind. Before men developed the capacity for understanding the classification of harmonies in connection with certain tonal centres, such principles were altogether inconceivable. But when once the idea of harmonic centralisation was well established, progress in readiness to of the composer in the artistic grasp purpose disposing his groups of harmony, so as to convey the impression of design, was extraordinarily rapid; as may be judged by the difference in obviousness between a concerto of Vivaldi's and a symphony of Mozart's.

It may be admitted, parenthetically, that there was a considerable falling off of style in instrumental music when it came more decisively under operatic influences. The standard of Tartini and his fellow-violinists is much higher than that of most of their successors; who infused the fashionable style of opera music into their instrumental works, to gratify the feeble taste of their fashionable pupils. But the development of the great branch of instrumental music did not follow in a straight line from Corelli and Tartini and such masters, but was the result of a process of filtration through the minds of all sorts and conditions of composers. Haydn and Mozart, and Beethoven in his turn, were in their younger days influenced by the flood of all sorts of music which came under their notice. And though their higher sense of style and expression rejected the more trivial and superficial things that they heard, their own work became a

sort of instinctive generalisation, which was based on the general average of all that attracted their attention. Every. thing has its degree and proportion in such matters, but great work is always the sum of an immense range of influences, and not the product of the impressions produced by a few isolated pieces of perfection. Thus in painting, if a man study only the manner in which some single master overcomes some special difficulty, his own treatment will probably be only a reflection of that master's work. But if he studies the methods of several, and finds the particular excellences of each, and grasps their principles of application, he has enlarged his own resources; and then he will not merely reproduce the external aspects of the works of one man, but will find out how to express his own individuality in terms which are the fruit of wider understanding of technique.

The special department in which the sum of all sorts of experiments was leading to a satisfactory establishment of principles, in the early part of the eighteenth century, was the extremely important one of harmonic design. Musical instinct was leading men to give the best of their powers to the development of the types of design now familiar in sonatas, and out of a multiplicity of experiments Mozart and Haydn, and their lesser contemporaries, gave their verdict very decisively in favour of a type of movement which looks at first most peculiar and enigmatical; but which not only proved to be most elastic and satisfying in practice, but becomes amply intelligible when the course of its history is taken into consideration.

The aim of composers was first to establish a point of departure; and when that had been sufficiently insisted upon, to set out from it and find an orderly series of contrasts of as many and various kinds as the art allowed; and to dispose them in such a way as to make each step lead onwards, till a circuit was completed by returning to and re-establishing the original starting-point. The first form in which this principle of design. is perceptible is the type of ordinary dance tune, which proceeded from a given point to a contrasting point, and after laying sufficient stress upon that point to emphasise the con

trast, worked back again and re-established the initial posi tion. When this type arrived at any degree of definite organisation, the most noticeable feature was the division into two fairly equal halves, with a close in the key of contrast at the end of the first half. Composers aimed at distributing their materials in such a framework so as to give the strongest emphasis to the most essential points, and to make the ideas lay hold of the mind. The requirements of average human beings were best consulted by making the beginning of the first half coincide in musical material with the beginning of the second half, and the end of the first half coincide with the end of the second half; since the beginnings and ends of phrases are always most easily retained by the mind. The portions between the beginnings and the endings were generally rather vague and indefiníte, though composers who had any artistic sense tried to keep the style strictly relevant throughout, and to maintain any rhythm which had presented itself definitely at the outset. The plan of a considerable majority of movements remained on these lines until the end of the polyphonic period of instrumental music; and the movements in the most artistic suites and partitas have very little more in the way of design.

When harmonic principles came to be cultivated in sonatas, the same order of distribution of materials was adopted; but in accordance with harmonic requirements, the passages which coincided in musical material were lengthened, and made more definite, both in respect of melody and rhythm. And at length the passage in the contrasting key, which had originally been little more than a cadence, was expanded to a length fully equal to the passage in the principal key; and it was frequently marked by a second subject or new idea, which became the distinguishing feature of the key of contrast. The ileas presented in the principal keys were repeated in the second half of the movement in positions corresponding to the arrangement of the earlier form; the first idea coming in the key of contrast at the beginning of the second half, and the second in the home key at the end. The portion between the two subjects in the second half began to expand very early;

both to widen the scope of the modulations, and because composers' instincts told them that there still was a lack of contrast through the exact regularity and definiteness of the main divisions. They felt that a contrast to this excess of definiteness was wanted, and they found it in the process of breaking up the subjects into their constituent figures and distributing them in progressions which had an appearance of being unsystematic.

By the time the movement had expanded to such propoitions, the mere re-statement of the second subject at the end was barely sufficient to give a comfortable reassurance of being safe home in the original key. And, moreover, as the progress of music in general was tending to a much more decisive recognition of the musical subjects and ideas themselves as the aim and end of things, it seemed strange that the musical idea, which occupied such prominence by reason of its appearing at the outset, should be so neglected in the latter part of the movement. So it became customary to repeat the first subject as well as the second at the end of all things in the principal key. Then it appeared that there was too much of this first subject, so its formal repetition at the beginning of the second half was dropped, though it still often appears in its old place even in modern works of the sonata order.

The whole process of development may be seen at a glance in a mechanical scheme. Taking the letters to represent the musical material, and the numerals to represent the principal keys, and the double bar to represent the point where the movement is divided into two portions, the process was mainly as follows:

a1, transition ending in b2 || a2, transition ending in b'.

ABA

2nd form. A1 B || A modulations B'.