CHAPTER 8 The Comic Style

Mid-Eighteenth-century Stylistic Change Traced to Its Sources in the 1720s; Empfindsamkeit, Galanterie; “War of the Buffoons”

Chapter:

CHAPTER 8 The Comic Style

Source:

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin

“Bach is the father, we are the kids” (Bach ist der Vater, wir sind die Buben), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was once quoted, perhaps apocryphally, as saying.¹ Only it was not J. S. Bach of whom he said it. “Old Sebastian,” as Mozart called him, was just a dimly remembered grandfather until the last decade of Mozart’s career, when (slightly in advance of the public revival described in the previous chapter) Mozart first got to hear the works of J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel, then virtually unperformed outside of the composers’ home territory—northern Germany in the case of Bach and Great Britain in the case of Handel. It was at the home of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, a Dutch-born Viennese aristocrat who maintained a sort of antiquarian salon, that Mozart made their acquaintance. The baron commissioned from Mozart modernized scores of Handel’s Messiah and other vocal works for performance at his soirées. Although the works of Handel and Bach made a big impression on the van Swieten circle, the very fact that they needed to be updated for performance in the 1780s shows how far their works had fallen out of the practical repertoire.

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 8 The Comic Style." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2024. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-chapter-08.xml>.

Citation (APA):

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 8 The Comic Style. In Oxford University Press, Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries. New York, USA. Retrieved 12 Oct. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-chapter-08.xml

Citation (Chicago):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 8 The Comic Style." In Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 12 Oct. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-chapter-08.xml