Lavigne - 1 Gary Lavigne Professor Pausina History of Music December 17th, 2012

European Music During the Age of Enlightenment: An Exploration of the Galant and Empfindsam Styles
The mid-eighteenth century marks a major turning point in the course of western music history. Accepted as the end of the Baroque period and beginning of the Classical period, the evolving social climate in western Europe began to bring forth a fundamental shift in both musical style and the reasons for which music was composed as early as 1720. Historically, this period of change which spanned the majority of the eighteenth century is known as the Age of Enlightenment and canvases breakthroughs in philosophy, music, politics, and even physics. The music composed during this transitional period often falls into one of two popular styles: the Galant style and the Empfindsam style, each a reflection of the European social evolution that was taking place during the 1700's. Compared, however, to the music of the Baroque period, which was composed largely for performance by virtuosos and written in highly refined contrapuntal styles, the movement to the mild Galant and Empfindsam styles was, from a technical point of view, decidedly retrograde. Nevertheless, this shift in musical style represents one of the most seminal eras in music history and would have a lasting impact on the evolution of western music. Eighteenth century Europe was a highly economically prosperous time. The overarching economic welfare gave rise to a unprecedentedly strong European middle class. The increased

Lavigne - 2 strength of the middle class combined with the sociopolitical revolutions occurring in both France and the new world represent the crux of the Enlightenments political and philosophical emphasis on social equality and individual rights. Along with economic abundance, the Enlightenment highly valued universal education for the populace, stressing learnedness in the arts and sciences. From a philosophical perspective, the Enlightenment embodies a return to naturalism, deconstructing the mechanistic nature of life and embracing the simpler beauties. The Galant style of music that emerged during the Enlightenment is a direct reflection of these values. The Galant movement, meaning modern or sophisticated, sought to make music more accessible to the public and less rigid than the preceding popular styles. The continued growth and prosperity of the middle class meant that an increasing segment of the population was interested in and capable of playing music. This created a new market for music composition, as there was now demand for pieces concerned not with entertaining an audience but being enjoyable (and playable) for an amateur performer, resulting in a decrease in the difficulty and contrapuntal rigidity of the music.Moreover, the Galant style hoped to deconstruct the complex, mechanical nature of late Baroque music, replacing it instead with pleasing, natural melodies. This shift can be seen beginning in the keyboard works of Domenico Scarlatti.

Figure 1: Domenico Scarlatti Sonata L. 123 in G Major

Lavigne - 3 In this excerpt from one of Scarlatti's (1685-1757) five-hundred fifty-five keyboard sonatas, there is clear use imitation and heavy ornamentation, typical of the Baroque style, but there is also seen a decided movement towards simplicity and clarity and away from the florid nature of Baroque music. Scarlatti's adherence to the Galant style becomes more evident in his later works, in which he often used figures in the bass such such blocked chords, non-melodic octaves, and the Alberti bass, suggesting a preference for the melodic line over polyphonic texture. This stylistic transition largely did away with the contrapuntal style practiced by composers such as J.S. Bach and replaced them with homophonic, melodically-focused pieces. The focus on melodic development in the early classical period widely overturned the Doctrine of Affections that had been axiomatic to the Baroque musical style. Rather than focusing on a single emotional idea (an affect) and exploring in through complex musicality as was typical of the fugal Baroque style, the Galant movement allowed the music to develop through the exploration of various emotions and only occasional modulation between major and minor modes. The typical musical phrase in a Galant piece is short and has clear melodic direction. Short phrases were used to make musical ideas clear and concise, each phrase often containing only one chord. Harmonic shape was developed through periodicity, the idea that several short two-to-four measure phrases when linked together would create a musical thought. This is, of course, in stark contrast to the styles typical of the baroque in which single phrases could contain several voices that take the melody on an often long-winded harmonic exploration. The following excerpt from a Menuet by Leopold Mozart (1719-1787) exemplifies the notion of periodicity.

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Figure 2: Leopold Mozart Menuet, excerpt #1 This is one period, consisting of two short phrases based on the same melodic motif. The first two-measure phrase follows a i-v progression, and the second, also two-measures, returns to the tonic of d minor with a v-i progression. This symmetry of the harmonic pulse is typical of the focus on naturalism and balance that is pervasive in the music of the enlightenment. The harmonic structure of Galant pieces is characterized by frequent strong cadences and a steady harmonic rhythm, slower than that of Baroque period. Cadences, which generally stayed within the principal chords of the tonic key, were organized hierarchically. Stronger cadences were reserved for specific parts of the pieces structure. For example, examine the second excerpt below from the same Menuet by Leopold Mozart:

Figure 3: Leopold Mozart Menuet, excerpt #2 In the first period of the piece (Figure 2), the composer chose to establish the key using a i-v-i progression, leaving the A chord in the minor mode. In this last phrase of the piece, however, he chooses to include a V7- i progression, an unarguably stronger cadence. This is typical of the Galant style in that the intensity of the harmonic gestures communicate the location of the

Lavigne - 5 phrase in the overall musical form very clearly to the listener. Compared to the overly simplified Galant style, the Epmfindsamer Stil, german for sensitive style, sought to maintain some of the harmonic complexity seen in Baroque music, while sacrificing contrapuntal forms for a more expressive manner of motivic development. Similar to the Galant style, Empfindsam did away with the idea of an entire musical work being dominated by a single emotional affect, rather allowing a motif to evolve and be developed through key exploration and unorthodox chromaticism where appropriate. Maintaining closer ties to it's Baroque roots, it comes as no surprise that the leading composer of the Empfindsam style was Carl Phillipp Emanuel Bach, son of the Baroque master J.S. Bach. In fact, many works of the style are akin to the codas of J.S. Bach's Preludes from the Well Tempered Clavier, featuring extemporaneous, uninhibited runs and rapid chord progressions. Figure 3 below is an excerpt from C.P.E. Bach's well-known keyboard work Solfeggietto.

Figure 4: C.P.E. Bach Solfeggietto in c minor H. 220 (note that the key signature of c minor is not included in the image) In this excerpt is seen a motif based on relatively simple (if not a bit rhapsodic) arpeggiation that moves quickly from the tonic of c minor through a progression of i-iv-vii-III and in the next line (not shown) modulates to g minor. Pieces in this style tend to display a wider dynamic range than those of the Galant style and, as seen above, have a more rapid harmonic rhythm.

Lavigne - 6 The Age of Enlightenment ushered in a time of unprecedented social equality and economic prosperity that resulted in a paradigm shift in the nature of European music. The growth of the middle class created an entirely new niche market for composers, who could suddenly support themselves by teaching and publishing music designed for the amateur musician, causing the nature of the music itself to move drastically away from its polyphonic Baroque roots and towards a melody-driven homophonic texture. This paralleled the values held tightly by the philosophical movements of the Enlightenment which included simplicity, balance, and natural beauty. The subversion of the Doctrine of Affections during this time allowed for an entirely new form of expressiveness and emotion to enter the musical world and essentially paved the way for future masters of the Classical period such as W. A. Mozart and Joseph Haydn. In fact, the Galant and Empfindsam styles represent, through their emphasis on freedom of form and emotional variation, the foundation of the romantic style in western music as it would become in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Bibliography
Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Solfeggietto H. 220. Anthologie Classique No.54 Berlin: A. Schlesinger, n.d. Web Burkholder, James Peter., Donald Jay. Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. New York [etc.: Norton, 2010. Print. Clark, Stephen L. "C. P. E. Bach and the Tradition of Passion Music in Hamburg." Early Music XVI.4 (1988): 533-41. Print. "Empfindsamer Stil." Empfindsamer Stil. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. <http://www.lcsproductions.net>. Moreno-Rojas, Jairo, and Thomas Christensen. "Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment." Journal of Music Theory 40.2 (1996): 354. Print. Mozart, Leopold. Menuet in d minor. RSB. Web. Radice, M. "Primary Sources. The Nature of the Style Galant: Evidence from the Repertoire." The Musical Quarterly 83.4 (1999): 607-47. Print. Scarlatti, Domenico. Sonata L. 123 in G Major. Milan: G. Ricordi & C, 1906-08. Web. Temperley, D. "Music in the Galant Style." Journal of Music Theory 50.2 (2006): 277-90. Print.