New Directions: Toward the Classic Style

No historical period ends with the tidiness that textbook dating would imply. Even as Bach was composing some of the finest Baroque music, indeed finest music ever, the currents that would lead to the next musical style were beginning to flow quietly beneath the surface.

Rameau and Couperin
Jean-Philippe Rameau's codification of music theory reflected newer practices in contemporary music. His rules defining the chord and its forms, the place of chords within a key and their functions in establishing key and driving music forward, the explanation of the formulation and meaning of higher chord forms such as "seventh chords," and other revelations of interconnectivity in music gave later composers clear guide posts. Indeed Rameau sought to follow his own rules in composing, often to public criticism that his music sounded forced and rigid in its clear, careful, and logical formal planning. The music of other contemporary progressive composers such as Antonio Vivaldi also featured tonal clarity and planning, two ingredients essential to the extended compositions of the Classic era.

Other evidence of changing times comes to the fore in the breakdown in the traditional features of the dance suite. Francois Couperin's suites, which he called ordres, were lengthy composites. They differed in several respects from the more traditional suite established by earlier composers. Although his ordres contained the obligatory movements the allemande, courante, and sarabande, they also contained movements that were not based on real dances, but rather were synthesized from characteristics of real dances.

The additional movements far outnumbered the nuclear ones. To these he appended fanciful titles such as "le Petit rien," "The Little Nothing," replacing the names of the dances and breaking radically with tradition. The titles often had nothing to do with the character of the music. With each consecutive published book of clavecin music, Couperin included other elements showing the breakdown of the suite. In the traditional suite, all the movements are composed in a single key. Couperin's addition movements were composed in different keys from the nuclear movements of the same suite.

The most progressive elements are found in the replacement of the heavy, quasi-polyphonic texture of high Baroque harpsichord music by a thinner texture in which the bass furnished support but less melodic material. The busy texture of the Baroque dance is cleared away in favor of a two-voiced, transparent texture.

Comparison of the textures in the music of D'Anglebert and Francois Couperin

Vivaldi and the Motive
Inherent in the music of another Baroque composer, Antonio Vivaldi, was the kernal that would give Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, the important Classic period composers, one of their most powerful tools to construct melody, the motive. The motive is a short fragment of music, and may consist of a melodic snatch, a rhythmic idea, or the two in combination. As seen in Vivaldi's music, the motive has immense flexibility, and this malleability is essential to the protracted and highly developed sonata forms of the Classic period. The following analysis should be compared with the materials presented in Kamien regarding the motive. Closer scrutiny of other examples in the text will also reveal motivic construction.

Antonio Vivaldii, the "Red Priest" of Venice. His red hair
and consequent skin condition made it impossible for him to
participate in normal priestly duties. The Church authoirities assigned
to him the less strenuous duties as music director of a girl's orphanage.

Below is given the melody, in score, to the first part of the first movement of Vivaldi's Concerto in D Major for Guitar and Orchestra. The specification "guitar" is a modern one. More likely, the concerto was written for mandolin. Vivaldi focused much of his professional energies on training the string orchestra at the orphanage where he taught. The mandolin and violin stringing and tuning are identical. A violinist who wishes to play the mandolin need only learn to pluck with his right hand rather than bow.

First section of Vivaldi's "Concerto for Mandolin"

The indication "tutti" indicates the first violin's melody during times when the full orchestra plays. "Solo" marks the point of entrance of the guitar accompanied by basso continuo. A visual analysis of the score discloses that the entire section, as is the following section not furnished here, is built upon two motives and their variants. The first motive is both melodic and rhythmic. Vivaldi uses the three-note kernal to built a longer melody by presenting it at consecutively different pitch levels throughout the section. The rhythm is described, at its simplest, as a rapid two-note motion followed a longer single note. The melody of the motive encompasses the interval of a third. The second motive has a character that is more rhythmic than melodic, but it should be noted that the repeated notes are important to the identity of the motive.

The motive that appears in measures 5-6 and repeated in measures 6-7, under the arched phrase line given above the score, is a hybrid. It features the range of the interval of the third from the first motive and the repeated note and rough approximation of the second. A new feature of the hybrid motive, found as the last three notes of measure 5, is the rhythm. Described in the simplest terms, it is a long note followed by a rapid two-note motion. This rhythmic snatch is derived from the first motive, and is a variant of that rhythm presented backward. The ascending line, beginning in the middle of measure 7 and continuing to measure 9, consists of pairs of repeated notes that climb in successive chromatic steps. The paired repeated notes derive from the repeated notes of the second motive. The last note of measure 9 is actually the beginning of the melody that fills measure 10. The first three notes of the measure derive from the last three notes of the second motive. Like the hybrid motive in measures 5-6, each of the four-note groupings in measure 10 encompasses the interval of the third, the same span as that of the first motive. The musical materials of the solo are handled similarly. The four-note of measure 14 also encompasses the interval of a third, and the repetition of the figure echoes the figural repetition of ideas found in the motives of measures 5-6 and measure 10. The motive in measure 18, repeated also in echo, contains elements of the basic motives. It incorporates the reversed rhythm of the first motive introduced in the hybrid at measure 5. It features the repeated note of the second motive in its central portion. Here, however, the range is extended to encompass the interval of a fourth. The material at measure 20, also repeated in the subsequent measure, represents a metamorphosis of the material of the first measure. The motives of the first half of the measure have the range, like the first motive, of a third, and the rhythm is the derivative one derived from the first motive and introduced at the end of measure 5. The second half of the measure duplicates the rhythm of the second motive and features a similar downward leap. The range of the last two notes of the measure retains the interval of the third.

Vivaldi's use of the motive as the smallest structural unit of melody was extremely far-sighted and anticipated one of the most important characteristics of the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Musical movements of the Baroque, regardless of genre, featured one thematic idea. The thematic idea was most often a melody of considerable length, so Vivaldi's motivic construction stands in sharp contrast to the general practice.

Toward Sonata Allegro Form
Classic period composers utilized not only these motivic procedures and but also grafted them unto an existing form to develop the sonata allegro. Classic composers built upon the Baroque binary dance form AABB. From the allemande, the Classic composers retained the gravity and high level of writing. They retained its tonal plan as well. Section A moves from the tonic key and ends in the key of the dominant. Section B begins in the key of the dominant and returns, by section end, to the key of the tonic. A significant modification, in addition to an essentially homophonic texture, was the inclusion of a second, contrasting theme to create contrast and tension. The use of motivic themes permitted the greatest possible range of flexibility, not only in the expansion of a single idea but also in the possibilities of combination of elements drawn from both motivic themes. In section B of the Baroque dance, the single idea is explored; the section B of the sonata allegro, both motives are explored, contrasted, and combined in what could almost be called a musical battlefield. Some eighteenth-century Baroque dance movements, especially those of J.S. Bach, feature a reference to the initial idea in the form of a fragmentary restatement followed by a few measures to signal closure of the piece. This "rounding" grew into the recapitulation and coda of the sonata allegro.

Gavotte I


Gavotte II

In the example above, the first gavotte is played with each section repeated. The second gavotte is also played with each section repeated. Upon arrival at the end of the second gavotte, the player returns to the beginning of the first gavotte and plays the dance but without repeating the sections. Here, however, I have chosen to repeat Section A because it gives the work a better sense of balance. The juxtaposition of the two dances and their combination into a s single movement creates the same form found in the Classic period as the "Minuet and Trio." It was not uncommon to find two dances combined in the scheme Dance I-Dance II-Dance I, or ABA, in the late Baroque, and such combinations served as the model for the later Minuet and Trio form.

Bach's "Gavotte I" exemplifies strongly Vivaldi's motivic influence upon Bach and demonstrates the process of "rounding" that occured in binary Baroque dances in the first half of the eighteenth century. Vivaldi's influence regarding the motive is explored extensively in the subsequent Supplemental Lecture.

The motive that the first gavotte is built upon is presented in the first two measures. Nearly all the subsequent music spins out this motive, each time beginning on a new pitch. Note the repeat of the initial motive beginning in the second half of the last measure of the fifth line. This repeat of the initial motive represents the aforementioned "rounding" of the AABB form to create AABaBa. Here the lower case "a" represents the thematic reference. The last few measures form a short coda. A similar development of materials is found in the second gavotte.

Classical composers, in particular Franz Josef Haydn, carried the process of "rounding" further to create a new form, the sonata or "sonata allegro." The form would become the mainstay of Classic period music, especially first movements of symphonies and string quartets, and is still found in some of today's classical compostions. Haydn is ascribed with the development and refinement of sonata form though other composers worked along the same lines.

Inherent in sonata form is contrast. The sonata spins out of two themes, not just one, and the two themes are always constructed to create sharp contrasts. For example, if the first theme has a rousing martial chararcter, the second will be gentle, sweet, and lyrical. Combined with the expanded capabilities of the instruments to contribute timbral and dynamic contrasts, the Baroque mission of dramatic contrast is finally realized in the Classic period in ways unimaginable to the Baroque composer. Moreover, violent contrasts in the music are not a surprise in an era of great political and social upheaval.

Below is a graph which contrasts the rounded Baroque binary dance form and the sonata or "sonata allegro." "Allegro," of course, is a reference to tempo appended because the form was almost exlusively used as the first movement of multi-movement works. In the graph, "T" stands for theme. Listening is essential to understanding. The materials describing sonata form in Kamien are excellent but should be compared to the Bach example above.