jul 1, 1766 - Keyboard Sonata, Op. 5 No. 2

Description:

JC's sonata is in the pures galant style, witty anhd ingratitaitng. The balanced phrases and short-range contrasts that we have observed in WF's sontatas have become so pronoucned that they came to bregarded as his peresonal signature. The openeing of the first movement offers a perfect example: two measures of loud chordal fanfare followed immediately by two measures of soft, continuous music, followed next by a balancing repetition of the whole four-measure complex. Contrast and balance operate in other dimensions as well: the loud measures describe an octave's descent, while the soft ones describe an octave's ascent; the former are confiend to the tonic harmony, while the latter intermix tonic and domiannt. Meanwhile, the texture is the work of a composer who seems, despite his surname, never to have heard of counterpoint, consisting of a well-defined melody against an equally well-defined accompaniment.

The hallmarks of what would much later come to be called the Classical style are fully evident: short, well-defined phrases in the upper register are set above unassuming accompaniments, often with formulaic bass patterns. The most common of these patterns, three-note chords broken low-high-middle-high, has been known ever since the eighteenth century as teh Alberti bass, after Domenico Alberti. The periodic phrases tend to be evenly balanced. Those ending on the dominant, requiring continuation are "antecedents"; their balancing "consequents" often begin like repetitions, creating "parallel periods"

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