Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Author's note
- Introduction: terms of discourse
- 1 What does instrumental music mean?
- 2 Answering with a unified voice
- 3 Answering with a German voice
- 4 Answering with aesthetic criteria
- 5 The importance of being correct
- 6 The reign of genius
- 7 A call to order
- 8 Epilogue: segue to the nineteenth century
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Answering with a German voice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Author's note
- Introduction: terms of discourse
- 1 What does instrumental music mean?
- 2 Answering with a unified voice
- 3 Answering with a German voice
- 4 Answering with aesthetic criteria
- 5 The importance of being correct
- 6 The reign of genius
- 7 A call to order
- 8 Epilogue: segue to the nineteenth century
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Hamburgische neue Zeitung (1777): Johann Wilhelm Häßler, Sechs Sonaten fürs Clavier.
No one who has studied the works of our Carl Emanuel Philipp Bach will deny that the true art of playing the keyboard is at home here in Germany. It was left to this great genius to rescue the keyboard from the oblivion into which it had fallen. He showed that becoming a master of this instrument took more than cutting frisky capers, more than supporting snatches of opera tunes with constant, drumming basses – things that could never move a true, musical ear. Many worthy men have followed his example, and thereby gained renown and honor in the eyes of true connoisseurs of music. These sonatas bear the stamp of the good, idiomatic style; they are full of good Harmonie and touching melody, and thus distinguish themselves markedly from the recent swarm of superficial Italian works and other fashionable compositions.
Hamburgische Correspondent (1789): Christian Friedrich Gottlieb Schwencke, Drey Sonaten.
He has chosen Bach, Haydn and Mozart as his models, and has so successfully entered into the manner of thinking of these famous men, that you can find their style with no trouble, for example that of Bach in the first and of Haydn in the second. But Schwencke is no slavish imitator and remains a genuine original, his models notwithstanding.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth CenturyAesthetic Issues in Instrumental Music, pp. 45 - 65Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997