Across the Borders of Music Eras and Forms : Ritornello and Concerto-Sonata Forms in C. P. E. Bach's Concertos

Fulias, Ioannis (2023) Across the Borders of Music Eras and Forms : Ritornello and Concerto-Sonata Forms in C. P. E. Bach's Concertos. STUDIA MUSICOLOGICA: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 64 (3-4). pp. 217-239. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

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, basing their views either on the earlier ritornello form or on both theory and practice of (only) the late eighteenth-century concerto, thus ignoring 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, clearly distinguishing between movements in ritornello and concerto-sonata forms; 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.

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