By sonata form, of course, I'm referring to the use of development and B-themes to transform the listener's response to the primary theme when it reappears during recapitulation. This is not the same as "sonatas" in the sense of solo or duo chamber pieces. Bach's sonatas are wonderful, but they offer a sequence of interrelated, unfolding insights, not a dramatic narrative in Haydn's sense. Bach was a master of narrative in his vocal works, but the text drives the narrative, not the music that embellishes and responds to it. As for Haydn vs Bach, why choose? Both were stupendous creators and innovators, completely dedicated to music. I have to admit that my ability to appreciate Haydn depends on suppressing a strong dislike for the classical Viennese idiom (same problem with Mozart) -- a problem I don't have with JSB -- but it's worth doing for the high level of invention and intelligence in just about everything Joe Haydn did. As for Bach, I remember an interview with the organist Helmut Walcha, who said that listening to Bach makes people believe more deeply whatever it is they already believe. Catholics, said Walcha, intensify their belief in Catholicism, Lutherans in Lutheranism, and Communists in Communism. Peter Patrick Bond wrote: > Hey Peter, what about baroque sonatas? Surely Bach far more > firmly reflected the compulsion to work out themes in all their > permutations, and hence his legacy is a more appropriate metaphor for > narrative and transformation. The classical era introduced us to a > variety of themes, often thoroughly and purposefully disconnected, > often purely decorative and meaningless. Give me Bach over Haydn any > day, comrade. > > > Moreover, the sonata form (which he more or less > > invented) mirrors the novel as a formal expression of the transformation > > of individual consciousness as it makes its way through the world. > > (Here I am arguing by homology, but in music I think it makes more > > sense.) Music passes definitively from decoration to narrative.
