Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century, and Its Influence on the Music of the Classical

Period
Author(s): Edward J. Dent
Source: Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 14. Jahrg., H. 4. (Jul. - Sep.,
1913), pp. 500-509
Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/929435
Accessed: 04-01-2020 13:25 UTC

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500 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc.

Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century, and its

influence on the music of the Classical Period.
By

Edward J. Dent.
(Cambridge.)

There are few episodes in the history of music which have been treated
with such scornful neglect as has been meted out to that period of Italian
opera which began with Alessandro Scarlatti and ended, according to most
historians, with the reforms of Gluck. The Oxford History of Music, in
spite of the fact that it consecrates two of its six volumes to the eighteenth
century, leaves it almost unmentioned. Impartiality is generally supposed to
be one of the first qualities which a historian must possess; but it must be
remembered that the historian, like the painter or the map-maker, has to re-
present the world which he sees as he sees it from his particular point of
view. Distortion is the inevitable consequence of the laws of perspective,
and the historian who sets impartiality before himself as an ideal can only
achieve it by viewing his subject, not from one standpoint, but from a circle
of points. Whatever point the historian takes, something will have to be
foreshortened, something will be left inaccessible to the eye, and the writer
who attempts to make the circuit of his subject in this way will probably
be censured for both tediousness and inconsistency. The learned authors of
the Oxford History are in no way to be blamed because they are not im-
partial. They made no concealment of the fact that they viewed the eigh-
teenth century from a standpoint that was exclusively German. It was the
standpoint of their generation: Wagner and Brahms once accepted by the
leaders of musical thought in this country, it was hardly possible to avoid
accepting as a general principle of musical criticism the supposition that
whatever was German was good, and whatever was Italian was bad. To
that they added the subsidiary principles that as a general rule sacred music
was superior to secular and instrumental music to vocal, exception being made
only for polyphonic choral writing, solo singing of a strictly declamatory type,
and of course German Lieder.
These principles once established, it was only natural that eighteenth
century Italian opera should be regarded as the concentrated expression o
all that was most evil in the art of music. The period under review was
the period of Bach and Handel. Bach never wrote operas at all; Handel'
formed only the least important part of his output, and if lesser men tha
Handel wrote operas, it was not reasonable to suppose that they should hav
been any better than his.
Let us shift our position, and see if it is not possible to view the period
in a different aspect. Let us call to mind the fact that the three greatest
men of the period, J. S. Bach, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, were almos
negligible quantities as far as the general musical life of Europe was con-
cerned. Bach was buried alive in the provincial towns of Central Germany;
Handel had made his home with the mad English, and Domenico Scarlatti

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 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc. 501

was settled permanently in Spain. There is not the least difficulty in ob-
taining a general idea of the Italian outlook on the music of the period,
since our own Dr. Burney in his General History of Music, his German
and Italian tour, and his life of Metastasio has left us copious record of
the cultivated opinion of his day. There is no need to sneer at Burney for
being a mere follower of fashion. His literary productions and his friend-
ship with Johnson are sufficient guarantee of general culture; the Diary of
his Travels and his History of Music show him to have been a serious re-
searcher and a careful critic, although it is only natural that modern in-
vestigation should have disproved many of his statements. Burney's critical
opinions may not be in accordance with those of the late nineteenth century,
but he certainly represents the most broadminded and intelligent type of
appreciation to be found in his day.
Nothing could be more misleading than to judge Italian opera by the
criticisms passed on the London opera performances by Addison, Lord Chester-
field and other writers, whose knowledge of music was of the slightest, and
who were only too willing to take the Philistine point of view, common
enough in our own day, that a drama in which people sing instead of speak-
ing is from the very outset ridiculous. If Italian opera as performed in
London often reached a low artistic level, the fault lay, not with the
operatic form itself, but with those who insisted on presenting opera in
Italian to audiences who did not understand that language. There is really
no reason why the performances in London should receive any more con-
sideration than those in St. Petersburg: Italian opera was composed prim-
arily for Italian audiences, and we must endeavour to consider it from an
Italian point of view.
It may be well briefly to summarize the history of Italian opera during
the previous century. The first originators of the operatic movement, Peri,
Caccini and their circle, were literary rather than musical, judged at least
in relation to the generations which preceded and followed them. They had
aimed at the simplest and most direct expression of words, unencumbered by
the rhythmical complications of the polyphonic style. But it must be borne
in mind that the Florentine group even at their most austerely declamatory
moments regarded the human voice as their principal means of expression.
They were making the attempt to restore the drama to those primitive con-
ditions in which speech and song were one and the same thing. Their poets
provided them with a language that was almost music itself, as Symonds says
of Tasso's Aminta, acted in 1572:
"This pastoral drama offered something ravishingly new, something which
interpreted and gave a vocal utterance to tastes and sentiments that ruled the
age. Poetry melted into music. Emotion exhaled itself in sensuous harmony.
The art of the next two centuries, the supreme art of song, of words subservient
to musical expression, had been indicated. This explains the sudden extraordinary
success of the 'Aminta'. It was nothing less than the discovery of a new realm.
the revelation of a specific faculty which made its author master of the heart of
Italy. The very lack of concentrated passion lent it power. Its suffusion of emo-
tion in a shimmering atmosphere toned with voluptuous melody, seemed to invite
the lutes and viols, the mellow tenors, and the trained soprano voices of the dawn-
ing age of melody".
It was possibly a mistaken ideal in some ways-poetry trying its hardest
to be music, and music trying to be speech; but the really important thing

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502 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc.

for us to notice is, that whether the result were speech or song, it was the
human voice, and not the instruments, that produced it. The instruments
are there, one may say, only to prevent the singer from lapsing completely
into speech; and even in the Nuove Musiche of Caccini, which are definitely
lyrical and musical, with many passages that strike the modern reader as
startling in a harmonic sense, the main burden of the musical expression is
none the less borne by the voice, and the strange harmonies are to be ex-
plained not as single points of emotional colour, but as the result of a con-
tinuous line of melody supported by occasional chords.
Monteverdi has generally been held up to admiration for his wealth of
orchestral colour and his bold treatment of harmonic dissonances. A close
study of the Orfeo, and better still of L'incoronazione di Poppea, shows us
that even in spite of his large orchestra and his numerous instrumental inter-
ludes, it is the singing voice which dominates the drama. The timbre of
particular groups of instruments may be used to intensify particular situa-
tions, bold successions of chords may enhance the effect of sudden mental
changes on the part of the characters represented; but Monteverdi never loses
sight of their supreme importance, and the more complicated his accompaniment
becomes, the more is it necessary to interpret his voice part as pure sing-
ing, in order to preserve a just aesthetic balance. The practice of modern
composers, to give the main intellectual interest to the orchestra and to let
the voice declaim any notes that can be managed to fit in, was entirely
foreign to Monteverdi's mind.
The rest of the seventeenth century shows us a development of tech-
nique rather than a change of ideals. There was a gradual tendency to
make opera appeal more and more to popular audiences, instead of reserv-
ing it for the entertainment of the aristocracy. It became, as modern au-
diences would say, "more dramatic". There was more action taking place
on the stage: there was less beauty of literary language, and more of a
story that could be grasped as a succession of events. Instead of taking a
story such as the myth of Orpheus, which everybody knew, the dramatist
aimed rather at surprising his audience with the unravelling of a plot which
was not familiar to them beforehand. But this unfamiliarity did not last
long: one opera imitated another, and the general scheme of seventeenth
century musical drama was soon reducible to a fairly constant formula. The
fact was, and the fact remains, that a series of surprises is not really suited
to musical interpretation. It is a disturbing factor in the steady development
of the music; and the musician has so much difficulty already in maintain-
ing his hold on our minds with any continuity that it is often ruinous to
the music to let the audience be distracted by externals which do not belong
to the musical atmosphere.
It was perhaps for this very reason that the opera of the late seven-
teenth century became more and more discontinuous. With a story such as
that of Orpheus, the poet had no need to be always giving us information
about facts. He could take most of the facts for granted and concentrate
himself on pure poetry: and as a natural result, the musician was never
hampered by the necessity of setting those uninteresting statements of plain
facts to music. It was the increased amount of time that had now to be
given to mere explanations which forced Cavalli, Cesti, Legrenzi and the rest
into the expedient of formal recitative. The balance could only be restored
by the over-development of the aria.

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 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc. 503

Alessandro Scarlatti has often been censured for having stereotyped the
Da Capo aria as the one and only form in which operatic emotions could
be expressed. One might as well censure Beethoven for writing in sonata
form instead of in those of the passacaglia, toccata and fugue. Whether
Scarlatti is to be held responsible for the change it is difficult to say with
certainty. He may very possibly have followed the example set by men of
less lasting fame; at any rate the change can be followed without difficulty
in his own works. A careful study of his operas and cantatas leads to the
conclusion that so far from merely taking the line of least resistance in
abandoning the varied forms employed by Cavalli, Stradella, and by himself
in his earlier years, he acted in the best interest of musical development
along the lines which at that particular moment were the most important.
The little airs in binary form and on ground basses are often exquisite ex-
amples of neat and elegant construction, but they do not give much scope
for dramatic expression. Forms which depend on the precise balance of a number
of short phrases in different keys do not lend themselves to treatment on a
large scale: they either lose the symmetry which is their principal charm, or
else they retain their symmetry and give an uncomfortable sense of stiffness
to the poetical expression. Moreover, the more complicated of these small
forms-which we may perhaps compare with such poetical forms as the triolet
and the roundel-often demanded a second stanza of verse to make their con-
struction clear to an audience, and it will readily be understood that this
exaggerated emphasis on formal construction was a hindrance to dramatic
expression. The Da Capo form, which Scarlatti selected as the one and only
type, was not perhaps the best possible of all forms for his purpose, but it
was a step in the right direction, and probably the best that he could find
at the moment. It was left for Mozart and his contemporaries to remove
the blemish of the Da Capo, and to perfect the structure of the developed
binary aria.
It is not until after the close of Scarlatti's artistic career that we come
to that crowning achievement of Italian opera seria-the dramas of Metastasio.
Scarlatti had been associated principally with Silvio Stampiglia, an Arcadian
of the school of Marino, and in his last years, with Apostolo Zeno, a poet
still respected in the history of Italian literature, but harsh in diction and
over-learned in style. This criticism is indeed almost exactly the equivalent
of that which was passed on the music of Scarlatti himself, strange as it
may seem to us nowadays. Scarlatti, it must be pointed out, was really a
composer of chamber music rather than a dramatist, and his audiences com-
plained that his arias were too severe and intellectual for the theatre.
In these days, when few English people aspire to any acquaintance with
Italian literature beyond a few hackneyed extracts from the most difficult of
all Italian poets, the name of Metastasio is almost unknown. To Italians
he is still one of the great classical poets, and it suffices to say that Car-
ducci wrote of him in terms of the sincerest admiration. The remarkable
thing about Metastasio is that his literary fame rests entirely on the librettos
which he wrote for operas and oratorios. There are some thirty dramas
which he composed with no other object in view than to be set to music.
They were not written to be acted and afterwards turned into operas; they
were designed for music, and designed with the consciousness that they were
not complete until they were set to music and sung. Their beauties were

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504 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc.

recognized from the very first, and from 1723 to almost the end of the
century they were set not once only but over and over again by innumerable
composers: some, such as Hasse, even set the same drama twice over them-
selves.
It is difficult for us moderns to realize the effect which this must have
had upon composers, singers and audiences. Whatever Metastasio's merits
may be as compared with Ariosto or Carducci, he was unquestionably the
greatest Italian poet of his day, the greatest perhaps that Italy had seen
since the death of Tasso more than a hundred years before. His style wa
vigorous and direct in the extreme, carefully designed to make an instant
aneous impression on the hearer, and to remain fixed in his memory. By
the middle of the eighteenth century the average opera-goer--and that pro
bably meant the greater part of the Italian people, at any rate in the town
-must have known most of Metastasio's dramas by heart, must have know
them far more intimately than the average English play-goer knows Hamle
or the Merchant of Venice. And not only did he know the dramas but he
must have known a good deal of the music to which Leo, Pergolesi, Vinci
Rinaldo di Capua and others had set them. Italian opera had indeed arrive
once more at something like the conditions which were so favourable to it
early development; stories which everybody knew by heart, expressed in noble
and dignified language, which gave the fullest scope to the interpretative skill
of composers and'singers.
That the system broke down was not by any means due to the so-called
reforms of Gluck. Gluck's innovations took effect only in France and Germ
any, where there was already developing a considerable prejudice against
opera in Italian. No; Metastasio's dramas lost their hold over the Italia
public because their ideal was too lofty for audiences which demanded amus
ment rather than edification. The seventeenth century had in characteristi
fashion mingled tragedy and buffoonery; Metastasio having eliminated the
comic element from his dramas (although I may point out that Metastasio had
a very considerable sense of humour, as may be seen in his letters) th
comic spirit had to find its outlet elsewhere. Naples had taken the lead quit
early in the century with a school of comic opera in the local dialect, a school
so short-lived that even Scarlatti only took up with the movement when i
was in its decadence; it was rescued by the genius of the Venetian Goldoni
who in collaboration with Galuppi and other composers produced an enormous
number of really amusing comic operas. It is however the inevitable fate
of all really comic opera to degenerate under the evil influence of popularit
into sentimental opera, since the public likes to have its feelings agreeably
stirred at the least possible expense either of emotion or intelligence. Whe
the time arrived for Mozart to write his masterpieces, opera seria had com
practically to an end outside Italy itself, and Vienna only wanted to liste
to musical comedy. In Italy the tradition remained, and has remained mor
or less continuously down to the present day; moreover, just as Italian oper
fertilized German instrumental music in the days of Metastasio, so it con-
tinued to do so in the days of Cherubini. Rossini and Bellini, as long in
fact as German music maintained the classical tradition. One might indeed
say with some truth that the classical tradition is nothing more or less tha
the Italian tradition.
This brings us back to a more detailed consideration of the conventional

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 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc. 505

aria and its artistic significance. Between 1720 and 1730 a marked change
came over the form. If we look at almost any aria of Scarlatti's middle
period, we shall find that the first part of it divides into two sections, the
first modulating to the dominant, and the second returning to the tonic.
The second section, after which the first is repeated, generally deals with
the same thematic material, and modulates to remoter keys. Already by 1702
Scarlatti had (in his cantatas at any rate) arrived at subdividing the two
halves of his first section in such a way as to present two definite themes-
a first theme in the tonic, a second in the dominant, then the first theme
in the dominant followed by the second theme in the tonic. This scheme
makes itself gradually more and more conspicuous in the later operas; but it
is only very rarely indeed that Scarlatti tries to make the two themes strik-
ingly different in emotional content. Such treatment is reserved for arias in
which the poet has laid great emphasis on the conflicting nature of the emo-
tions to which the character on the stage is supposed to be a prey. In these
cases, Scarlatti is sometimes startlingly effective in the invention of short
phrases which contrast in character in the most vivid manner possible. His
successors adopted a rather different plan. Their arias aim less at beina
intensely dramatic than at being broadly musical.
It is probable that the change was due to some extent to the influence
of such singers as Farinelli, Vittoria Tesi and a few others who came into
prominence at that time, and who seem fo have achieved a standard of exe-
cutive ability markedly superior to that of the previous generation. We
need only refer to the pages of Burney to convince ourselves that Farinelli
at any rate was no mere virtuoso but an artist of the first rank, and a man
of exceptional dignity of character. Under this influence the aria was gradu-
ally more and more extended. In the first part of the aria, the two themes
become clearly contrasted, and definitely separated, so as to give the singer
an opportunity of exhibiting his powers in contrasted styles, generally in a
broad sustained melody to begin with, followed by passages of brilliant
coloratura as a second theme. The instrumental ritornello is expanded at
the same time, and by entering after the first definite close in the dominant
gives the singer a moment's repose, and adds to the general constructive effect
of the composition. As long as this system remained in the hands of great
composers such as Hasse and Jommelli, and great singers such as Farinelli.
there was no lowering of artistic standards. Historians have often reprinted
the alleged rules which regulated the composition of operas: the lists of
arias-aria di portamento, aria d'agilitd, aria d'imitaxione, aria di mezxo
carattere etc., and have held up to ridicule the system by which each scene,
that is each entry of a character, invariably terminated with an aria, after
which the character left the stage. These rules, it need hardly be said were
like all rules of musical composition, merely the deductions of theorists from
the practice of the great composers. In all the arts, as in commerce, there
are trade names for certain things, there are certain more or less regular
categories into which those who are not men of genius find it convenient to
classify them. There is no reason why the so-called rules of the Italian opera
should affect our judgment any more than the rules which according to instruction-
book have regulated the construction of fugues and sonatas. It so happened
that at this particular epoch composers were preoccupied in the main with
questions of what we call form, a preoccupation which lasted from the days

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506 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc.

of Scarlatti to those of Beethoven. At other times other problems have

come into the foreground, just as in painting there was a period when all
artists were obsessed with problems of perspective. It was only natural that
having found certain obviously satisfactory forms they should insist upon
them until their main outlines were so familiar to audiences that the com-
posers could try all sorts of experiments in varying their inner details with
a view to poetical expression.
For it was undoubtedly emotional expression at which the Italian com-
posers were aiming. Indeed it was perhaps the weakness of their system
that they sacrificed almost everything else to it. If every scene ended with
an aria, it was because the actor was on the stage for that purpose. He was
there to express himself vocally, and if he left the stage without an aria,
he was for practical purposes a persona muta.
So intent were the Italians on the expression of individual personality in
an aria that it was a long time before they could even reconcile themselves
to duets or ensembles. They were moreover content, while a character was
singing his aria, to ignore completely all other factors in the drama; one
might say they had put themselves so completely into the personality of the
singer of the moment that they could see nothing except what he was sup-
posed to be seeing himself.
It will easily be understood that so imaginative a frame of mind was
not possible among audiences to whom Italian was a foreign language, and
that, just as there were few poets who reached Metastasio's literary level,
there were few composers able to set his tragedies in a worthy style, and
few singers able to give a worthy interpretation of them. A letter of Meta-
stasio's quoted by Burney shows what his feelings were towards the maltreat-
ment of his dramas by indifferent audiences and performers.
Metastasio, writing to an Abbd at Saluzzo about 1760-70,
"Thanks him and the ladies and gentlemen of Saluzzo for defending his
poor dramas from the injuries which they daily suffer in all the theatres of
Europe, from those ignorant and vain vocal heroes and heroines, who having
substituted the imitation of flageolets and nightingales to human affections,
render the Italian style a national disgrace, in the opinion of those countries
which have been obliged to us for all their knowledge of the art".
"This alludes", says Burney, "to the abridging and changing the scenes
and airs of his dramas, to humour the caprice of singers, who disregarding
character, place, and propriety not only in Pasticcio operas, but in every
other, where no scruple is made to introduce an Aria d' abilifti or di bravura
which has been applauded in a former drama, without the least attention to
the preceding recitative, or business of the scene. These airs taken out of
their original niche, when translated in the book of the opera, continue to
incline the good people of England to imagine the words of an opera to be
all nonsense; and that even the musical dramas of Metastasio are as absurd
and subject to ridicule, as those which Addison has described with so much
pleasantry in the Spectator".
The aria remained fairly constant, whether in serious, comic or senti-
mental opera, to the end of the century. As the first part became more and
more developed, the second part lost its importance; as new means of ex-
pression were found for the voice, aud ornaments became more and more
conventional, so that there was no dramatic effect to be expected any longer

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 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc. 507

from the repetition of the first section after the da capo, the second section
fell out altogether, and we see from the arias in Mozart's Idomeneo that a
more wonderful and more passionate style of expression had been evolved
out of structural necessities. The transposition of the two themes from tonic
and dominant into dominant and tonic respectively necessitated a reconsidera-
tion of their position with regard to the singer's compass; and even in Vinci's
day this had led to modifications of melody, which were developed by Mozart
in a very striking way.
It will already have become clear, I hope, that this steady development
of the operatic aria had a considerable influence on the development of the
sonata and symphony, which took place for the most part in Germany, and
which is naturally associated with the names of Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart
and Beethoven. We must however be careful to remember that the sonata
was not suddenly invented by Emanuel Bach out of nothing. Recent rese
has demonstrated that there were Italian writers of clavier sonatas before
Bach, and not merely sonatas of the undifferentiated, mainly contrapu
type which we associate with the idiom of John Sebastian Bach or Hand
but sonatas which show at once their close affinity with those of Haydn
Mozart. This point has been elucidated by the labours of Fausto Torre-
franca, the results of whose researches on the sonatas of Galuppi and Platti
are to be found in recent numbers of the Rivista Musicale Italiana 1).
It has been the frequent tendency of musical historians to suppose that
the development of any particular forms, e. g., the sonata, the symphony, the
overture, can be traced without any reference to other branches of music.
This principle is often misleading, and we shall often do better to regard
the actual form as a thing common to all kinds of music at any given period,
and the technique of the particular instrument or group of instruments as
an entirely separate matter. If we wish to consider the developments of
musical form which ultimately led to the classical sonata, we must make a
careful study of Italian operas and chamber-cantatas in the later seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries, and we may profitably study the operas of
Lully and Purcell in addition. There are a variety of aspects under which
the problem may be considered. During the earlier period the most inter-
esting phenomenon is the interrelation of form and tonality. Thus in the
period represented conveniently for us by the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book we
see that a strong sense of modality as opposed to modern tonality goes with
the employment of forms which we may represent by the formula A1 A2
Bt B2 or even A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2. The really important change which took
place in the course of the seventeenth century was the introduction of the
principle of alternation, which led to the adoption of the scheme A1 B2 A2 Bt.
Until this principle was firmly established, composers, vocal and instrumental,
had at their disposal a relatively large number of different forms, but none
that admitted of organization on a large scale. It is obvious that such forms
as A A B B, A A B B C C etc. are only practicable when the single sections
A, B, C etc. are extremely small and concise. The only sound method of
organization lies in the employment of a scheme based on the variation-idea

1) F. Torrefranca, La creazione della Sonata dramatica moderna, Rivista Musi-

cale Italiana xvii., 309. Poeti minori del clavicembalo, ib. xvii., 763. Le sonate
per cembalo del Buranello, ib. xviii., 276, 497, xix., 108.

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508 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc.

-either ordinary variations (instrumental) or the type of vocal variations

common in Luigi Rossi (two or three stanzas set to more or less different
melodies on the same bass), or finally the ground-bass, passacaglia, chaconne
etc. The principle of alternation once established in Scarlatti's day, the
"centipede" type of construction-the stringing together of small consecutive
segments-became almost entirely obsolete, and through the chaconne sur-
vived up to the early days of Mozart, it underwent considerable modifications
of structure in the direction of the modern symphony. The form ABA was
soon expanded under Scarlatti by making A = a1 b2 a2 bl and by making B
a thematic development of material drawn from A.
But this development of the form is almost exclusively vocal. Alessandro
Scarlatti's harpsichord pieces and symphonies dating from 1715 or later are
structurally far in arrear of the chamber-cantatas which he composed some
ten or fifteen years earlier. The fact was that in all this period it was the
singers who took the intellectual lead in music, and the instrumentalists who
followed humbly in their wake. With the appearance of Domenico Scarlatti,
Giovanni Platti and Galuppi a new influence begins gradually to make itself
felt, an influence still more apparent in the clavier sonatas of the Germans.
The publication of Domenico Scarlatti's complete works for the harpsichord 1)
has enabled us to obtain a new insight into the methods of this most original
of composers. Among the 500 and more pieces printed by Longo there are
scattered some dozen sonatas which were originally composed for violin and
continuo2). What first caused them to be noticed was their difference from
the others in form. They are not single movements in the developed binary
form familiar to all students of Domenico Scarlatti, but groups of short move-
ments, generally either dances, slow airs or contrapuntal movements, not
showing much advance on the sonatas of Corelli. It is possible of course
that they may be early works, although they are to be found in a volume
dated 1742 which includes harpsichord pieces of a very advanced nature. It
is impossible at present to make any attempt to group Domenico Scarlatti's
harpsichord sonatas in any sort of chronological order; but it is fairly easy
to pick out examples here and there which from their style alone can be
attributed either to an early or a late period. Their form however does not
vary much, in spite of harmonic audacities, and we may safely assume that
the developed binary form had been established by him almost at the outset
of his career.
It will be obvious from what has been said above that this form was
derived from the opera and the chamber-cantata. Moreover, a study of the
thematic material employed will show that Scarlatti was indebted to the opera
for his actual ideas just as the pianoforte works of Weber and Chopin are
indebted to the operas of Rossini and Bellini. Modern musicians have been
inclined to regard Scarlatti simply as a virtuoso; but a more careful study
of his works will show that there is often a strong sense of vocal melody
underlying his scales and arpeggios. His use of the direction cantabile is
very significant.
In spite of the fact that the Italians took the lead in the composition

1) Edited by Alessandro Longo (Ricordi).

2) This discovery was made by Donald Francis Tovey, and confirmed by the late
Joseph Joachim. An investigation of the MSS. at Venice further corroborated this.

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 Edward J. Dent, Italian Opera in the Eighteenth Century etc. 509

of clavier-sonatas, it must be admitted that with certain outstanding excep-

tions the Italian sonatas are inferior in actual musical value to those of the
Germans. The reason for this seems to be that the Italians had no great
need to write harpsichord sonatas when their singers were expressing their
ideas for them in so much more vivid a manner. Most of their harpsichord
sonatas were in fact published outside Italy, in Nuremberg, Amsterdam or
London. They probably found more admirers in the countries dependent an
those remote publishing centres than they did in the land of their origin.
And the avidity with which their German imitators took up the style and
developed it shows us clearly what the point of view of these admirers was.
What the Germans were aiming at in their harpsichord sonatas was the re-
production for ordinary domestic consumption of those wonderful Italian arias
which every Italian could hear in the theatre as often as he liked, but which
only rarely came the way of the average music lover north of the Alps.
And so the strange phenomenon becomes apparent that the sonatas of C. P.
E. Bach are more dramatic, more melodious, more emotional than those of
Galuppi or Platti.
If C. P. E. Bach was saturated with Italian influences, they were equally
strong on Haydn, the pupil of Porpora, and still stronger on Mozart. The
influence of Jommelli on the Mannheim school of symphonists is now gener-
ally admitted; but I do not know whether musicians have begun to realize
that it is hardly possible to interpret Mozart and the rest adequately with-
out having some familiarity with Italian vocal music. Torrefranca seizes the
characteristic point when he speaks of la sonata dramatica moderna; the word
dramatica is what exactly indicates the difference between the music of
C. P. E. Bach and that of his father. The modern sonata was dramatic,
because it was based on the Italian aria, and the Italian aria did not be-
come capable of inspiring the sonata until the contemporaries of Domenico
Scarlatti, the generation of Leo, Vinci, Pergolesi etc. had extended the aria-
form by breaking up its continuous melodic phrases into emotional fragments
which lent themselves to thematic development. It was this emotionalism
that the Germans sought to reproduce-the ever recurring phenomenon of the
union of romantic Faust and classic Helen, the German infatuation with Italian
beauty and the strange transformation of it into an unfamiliar medium.

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