Ιωάννης Φούλιας: Across the borders of music eras and forms: ritornello and concerto-sonata forms in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s concertos

Αρχική σελίδα / Συνέδρια – ημερίδες – διαλέξεις

Ιωάννης Φούλιας, “Across the borders of music eras and forms: ritornello and concerto-sonata forms in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s concertos” [“Στο μεταίχμιο μουσικών περιόδων και μορφών: οι μορφές ritornello και σονάτας κοντσέρτου στα κοντσέρτα του Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach”], Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών, Φιλοσοφική Σχολή, 23 Αυγούστου 2022.

It is well known that the 52 concertos for keyboard(s) or other solo instruments of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach constitute a repertoire that crosses the borderline of baroque and classic eras from both a chronological and a stylistic point of view. However, their analogous position concerning the baroque ritornello form and the various classic concerto-sonata types is not yet as clear as it should be, since most scholars tend to examine and classify these works in a rather one-sided way: on the one hand, Stevens (1965, 1986, 2001) and Davis (1983, 1988) base their views mainly on the older ritornello form, claiming that the recapitulation function should be limited only to the tonic return of the initial theme either from the orchestra or from the soloist, and thus disregarding the crucial realisation or bypass of the sonata principle in the last solo section; on the other hand, Schulenberg (1982/1984, 2014) remains laconic about the implementation of the hybrid ritornello-sonata forms in Bach’s concertos, whereas Galand’s (2000) as well as Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s (2006) almost identical typologies of concerto-sonata forms, based mostly on both theory and practice of (only) the late 18th-century concerto, still lack in explaining many important aspects of formal design in Bach’s concerto movements in particular. The present paper submits the findings of a comprehensive research on Bach’s whole concerto output, distinguishing among movements in ritornello and concerto-sonata forms that have been composed in parallel at about the same periods of time; furthermore, it highlights the impressive variety of concerto-sonata structural types that Bach uses in his works: ternary but also binary sonata forms with five, four, or three ritornellos, the specific role and function of which (and especially of the intermediate ones) cannot be always restricted to the specifications of even the most recent (and seemingly all-embracing) related typologies.