Development of Form

    Bach's contrapuntal style was already considered old-fashioned before he died, and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who was at the court of Frederick the Great, and later had a post in Hamburg, seemed, to his generation, to be more important than his father.  He experimented with a new style of writing, consisting of a single, ornate melody with a formal aspect, and his Clavier sonatas influenced Haydn considerably.  They were usually in three movements, quick, slow, quick.  The opening movement contained a first section with a string of short themes or figures in the tonic key, followed by others in either the dominant or relative major key; while the second section, though it began in this related key, went some distance afield, with both keys and themes, before it returned to the original string of themes, now all in the tonic key.  In this plan we see the first hints of a contrasted second subject or group of subjects in a related key, and a development section, two ideas, which Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were later to put to good use.  

    C. P. E. Bach is usually considered the forerunner of sonata form. (For further details see "The Evolution of Sonata Form" on pp. 80-88.)  

    Haydn experimented a good deal with musical form, and although one thinks of sonata form as being established by him, it is important to realize that many of his movements are a very free mixture of several forms, which cannot be given a particular "label".  Mozart, on the whole, was less adventurous in this matter.  By the time of Beethoven the outlines of the different forms that were used in sonatas and symphonies and similar works had become accepted in the musical world, and Haydn's and Mozart's works, together with those of contemporaries of Iesser importance, laid this foundation. (For further details of the different forms, see Chapter Nine.)  

    Beethoven, then, had established forms ready at hand.  He enlarged them, but did not greatly change them.  His development sections, his codas, his modulatory experiments, his scherzos, and his variations in the number and order of the movements are all noteworthy. (Again, see Chapter Nine for further details.)  

    Schubert, too, accepted the standard forms, and was content to be rather conventional in this matter.  He tended to be, too prolix, but his modulations were adventurous, colorful and well managed.