[14] Sonata, originally from Italian "Suonare," to sound, as Cantata was from Italian "Cantare," to sing. Later the word Sonata took on a more precise meaning, which we shall study in later chapters.
[15] The name "Rondo" (Fr. "Rondeau") is derived from "round," and its application to pieces of the type we are considering was due to the constant recurrence of one principal melody.
[16] The first partial measure and all the other half measures where the double bars occur are counted separately, making 65 measures in the whole piece.
[17] The fixed part (A) in the Rondo of this period usually entered but three times instead of four as is the case here. Couperin's "La Bandoline" (in "Les Maitres du Clavecin") is another example of the extended form of the Rondo.
[18] Pauer's "Alte Meister" (Breitkopf and Härtel) contains several interesting Rondeaus by Couperin and Rameau. "Les Maitres du Clavecin," edited by Kohler (Litolff), Vols. X and XI, may also be consulted.
[19] The numbers referred to here are those of the Schirmer edition.
The process of musical development we have been considering in previous chapters has tended gradually but surely towards freedom of expression and, at the same time, definiteness of form. As this process has advanced, melodies have become less and less constrained, yet the forms themselves have crystallized into certain accepted types. The ideal of all this progress was unity and variety; in other words, composers felt the desire to expand their powers of expression and saw that this expansion must in the nature of things conform to certain æsthetic principles and obey certain laws. Mere luxuriance of speech without order or system means confusion; but order and system without living feeling means aridity. These two elements must go hand in hand, and in the music of masters like Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms they do.
The so-called variation form admirably illustrates these tendencies. From its very beginning down to the present day there has been a constant re-adjustment of its expressiveness and its formal interest; a constant attempt to strike the right balance between the two qualities. The form is almost as old as music itself. From the earliest times composers have felt the necessity of varying their tunes by one device or another. Even before the other primitive forms had crystallized, crude variations existed, and we find old hymn tunes or popular songs repeated over and over again with elaborate changes of phraseology or with contrapuntal devices. Certain arid processes--such as writing a tune backwards--were sometimes employed, and a study of the whole range of the variation form in its early stages reveals a constant fluctuation.