CHAPTER 43
Music in the Age of Enlightenment:
Keyboard Music
• In his Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith
provides a seminal account of capitalism, an
economic system in which the means of production
of goods are privately owned and bring wealth to
private individuals. At this time, women of the
growing middle-class had the opportunity for the
first time to make music in the home. They did so
with the keyboard. And composers quickly rushed
to supply music for this emerging amateur market.
To make keyboard music more accessible to the amateur keyboardist,
composers developed several simple accompanied techniques such as
• Alberti bass, which imitates the triad by playing the notes successively
• Murky bass, which provides a rumbling octave bass
• Pianoforte: invented in Florence around 1700 by
Bartolomeo Cristoforo. The strings of the piano are
not plucked, as those the harpsichord, but stroked
with a hammer that quickly retracts. For the first
time a keyboard instrument could:
– Play all dynamic ranges from piano to forte (hence,
pianoforte)
– An ampler range of articulations like staccato and
legato
• Domenico Scarlatti: the son of opera and
cantata composer Alessandro Scarlatti, he became
keyboardist to the king of Naples at the age of
fifteen. He then served as keyboardist and music
teacher at the courts in Portugal and Madrid.
Among his compositions, Essercizi probably served
as exercises to develop specific keyboard skills.
• Hand-crossing: a keyboard technique in which
the left hand continually crosses over the right to
create a three-level texture. It is one of the
hallmarks of Scarlatti's style.
Acciaccatura: Italian for something battered and bruised. Scarlatti
famously makes use of acciaccatura in the form of crunching
downbeat dissonances before the arrival of a new section.
Frederick the Great
King of Prussia, he was an enlightened leader with strong interest in
poetry and music. At his court he hosted French philosopher Voltaire,
and composers Johann Quantz and C.P.E. Bach. Every evening he
played flute sonatas and concertos for two hours.
• C.P.E. Bach, the second son of J.S. Bach, worked
at the court of king Frederick the Great in Berlin.
Although he composed in all musical genres except
opera and Catholic Mass, music keyboard was at
the heart of his creative work. As Quantz had done
for the flute before him, C.P.E. wrote an influential
instructional book for the keyboard titled Essay on
the True Art of Playing the Keyboard.
• Empfindsamer Stil: a term applied to the hyper-
expressivity that affected northern European arts in
the second half of the eighteenth century.
• Bebung: "quaking," a clavichord technique in which the performer
holds and wiggles the key up and down to produce a vibrating
sound.
• Fantasia: in the eighteenth century a rhapsodic, improvisatory
work, often unbarred, in which the composers gives free reign the
musical imagination without concern for conventional musical
forms.
The Piano Comes to England
• In 1750 the piano was virtually unknown in
England; by 1800 it had almost completely replaced
the harpsichord.
• Square piano: a small box-shaped piano with
strings running at right angles to the keys that
could be placed on a table or a stand. Johannes
Zumpe began manufacturing these popular
diminutive pianos in the 1760s.
• Grand piano: originally called "grand" to
distinguish it from Zumpe's small pianos.
• J.C. Bach: the youngest of J.S. Bach's sons, he first made a living
composing operas in Italy and then moved to London, where he
mostly wrote keyboard pieces. He was the first to publish
keyboard sonatas that indicated the piano on their title page and
to play the piano in public concerts. His piano pieces, in galant
style, are not technically difficult and appealed to amateurs.
• Bach-Abel concerts: a subscription series of public concerts in
London organized by J.C. Bach and Carl Abel.