The Christian Democritus

Abstract

torien (Leipzig, 1700), and written by Johann Kuhnau, Bach's predecessor as Kantor at St. Thomas' Church in Leipzig. The title of the sonata is: " Saul malinconico e trastullato per mezzo della Musica." The first movement introduces the melancholic and distracted king by means of a sombre minor key, chromatic developments, violent changes of time, and a fugue with unusual intervals in the theme. Heraclitus and Democritus appear again, though not under their proper names, in a much discussed and famous sonata by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, second son ofJohann Sebastian. The question of programme music greatly occupied the northern German circle of eighteenth-century wits. They connected it with Galenus' theory of the temperaments, which at that time began to be rediscussed by aestheticians. Ph. Em. Bach appeared to be the right man to give effect to such ideas, for his instrumental music was observed to be directed towards and capable of producing " sounds of sadness, of affliction, of pain, or of tenderness, or of pleasure and merriment in monologues; or of maintaining by mere passionate sounds a sentimental conversation between similar or opposed characters " (J. G. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der schonen Kiinste, 1774, Vol. II, p. Io94). Under the influence of such ideas Bach wrote in 1749 a descriptive sonata for two violins and double bass, which is meant to represent " a conversation of a sanguine with a melancholy person." He published it in 1751 as the first of" Two Trios " at Nuremberg, and added to it a detailed programme. It is among the most witty and brilliant pieces ever written. Bach goes far beyond Carissimi, for he includes in his contrasts not only the major and the minor keys, but also tempi and phrases.1 Bach himselfwas sceptical about the value of his experiment. In a conversation with the poet Matthias Claudius (1768), who had asked him why he did not compose any more of those " Pi&een, darin Charaktere ausgedriickt sind " and which the poet praised for their attractive originality, Bach replied that " words would be the shorter way." There is a tradition that Joseph Haydn who, according to his own confession, owes so much to Ph. Em. Bach, represented " characters " in his symphonies--only that Haydn was too musical and tactful to reveal his secret intentions. After him, Beethoven, in the finale of his string quartet Op. I8, No. 6, tried to represent the changing moods of a person afflicted with melancholia (" La Malinconia "):-it was not one of his most inspired inventions. ALFRED EINSTEIN