Ioannis Fulias, “Tradition
and innovation in Muzio Clementi’s Two Capriccios in form of Sonatas for the
Pianoforte, opus 47”,
in:
Ioannis
Fulias, Petros Vouvaris & Kostas Kardamis (ed.), 10th Musicological
Conference: “Musical heritage in Western art music” (Conference
proceedings, under the auspices of the Hellenic Musicological Society, Corfu,
26-28 October 2018), Hellenic Musicological Society, Thessaloniki 2019,
p. 94-111.
Despite the fact that Muzio Clementi’s Two capriccios, opus 47, belong to
the most mature and remarkable examples of his abundant piano works, they remain
unappreciated and also totally “enigmatic” for the modern musicological
research, since their few and superficial approaches so far do not converge even
on their most rudimentary features: how many movements have these two works,
what is the referential key of the second one and how they both are related to
the early 19th century genres of fantasy and sonata for piano? In order to
answer the above questions, these two capriccios are examined not only in depth
but also in relation to the broader work of the composer, which contains both
conventional and extremely pioneering aspects (such as the “three-key
expositions / recapitulations” that are often applied among the sonatas in minor
mode or some highly deformational
cases of
sonata form – like the one that appears in the second movement of the Piano
Sonata opus 40 no. 2). In this way, along with a decoding of the semantic
content of the multifaceted term “capriccio” in music at the borderline between
classical and romantic eras, both the works of Clementi’s opus 47 are
interpreted as “character sonatas” and their unique features are emphasized:
such are, among others, the huge slow introduction as well as the “double
exposition” in the first movement (in sonata form) of the first capriccio, the
idiomatic use of the double variations form in the final movement of the same
work, as well as the organisation of almost the whole second capriccio at the
basis of the – generally regarded as much later
in the instrumental repertoire
– compositional practice of “progressive tonality”.
© Ioannis
Fulias