Approaching a History qf 18th-Century Music 

Daniel Heartz 

Any attempt at a comprehensive history of music in the 18th 
century runs up against some deep-grained prejudices. Histori-
ography in this area has been done largely by, for, and about 
Germans. It was perhaps inevitable that they should divide the 
century according to their Grossmeister, with the first half being 
the "period" of Bach and Handel, the second that of Haydn and 
Mozart. The divisionis impossible as history, if history means a 
rational attempt to seek the interconnection between events. It 
ignores the fact that the well-spring for the music of Haydn and 
Mozart was a specific 18th-century heritage other than that 
represented by Bach and Handel. It ignores what 18th-century 
critics themselves perceived as the breakthrough to a "modern" 
style: the new simplicity and naturalness achieved in Italian opera 
(also in the closely dependent area of concerted church music) 
early in the century. From the innovations in performance and 
composition of Vinci, Leo, Pergolesi, and Hasse (often in conjunc-
tion with the new poetry-the Arcadian Neo-Classicism 
represented at its most refined by Metastasio) 18th-century music 
unfolds logically as an unbroken stylistic chain. Parallel move-
ments and new discoveries there certainly were. The perennial 
counterpoint of French achievements, which offered another 
antidote to the stiffness of the older style, provides one case in 
point. The peculiar instrumental flare of many German-
Bohemian musicians that came to flower at Mannheim offers 
another. But the basic stock remained just that to the end of the 
century: Italianate and operatic. Bach and Handel had little or 
nothing to do with the newer melodic and harmonic fashions. 
Their importance for Mozart and Haydn came late, mainly after 
1780 in fact, and in the manner of a revelation. 

The death of Bach has a sentimental meaning for all music 
lovers today. It meant nothing at the time. For all that the Leip-
zig master participated upon the European musical scene of his 
day he might as well have died a generation earlier. He did not 
take the extra step that made Hasse the darling of Dresden and 
of Europe (Laus Deal). With Handel the case is different. Had 
he remained in the North we should probably honor him now 

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no more than we do a hundred other Lutheran worthies. Italy 
coaxed him beyond his originally turgid and unvocal manner-
isms. Had he remained to bask in Southern climes he might have 
joined the Vinci-Perglolesi thrust into the mainstream of 18th-
century music. But he went instead to Augustan England. There, 
musical backwater though it was, he found himself in a land that 
led the world with regard to the freedom and dignity of the 
human ,spirit. To England, as Professor Lang has shown so 
eloquently, we owe thanks that Handel became one of the 
greatest of all masters. At the same time it should be borne in 
mind that Handel in London stood aside from the main evolution 
nearly as much as Bach. 

The terms which musicology has attached to the pre- and 
post-1750 "eras" are as misleading as the periodization itself. 
They derive from art-historical concepts of fifty years ago that 
are either wrong, imperfectly understood, or hopelessly outdated. 
One hears on all' sides, and with the greatest confidence, pro-
nouncements about what are "Baroque music" and "Classical 
music." The perpetrators most often have no notion about the 
issues involved that led initially to the choice of such terms, to 
what areas of endeavor they were meant to apply, or what 
geographical and political biases they betrayed. It would be 
necessary to come to terms with all these issues before an 
intelligent terminology could be developed. Moreover, it would 
be necessary, when seeking helpful parallels in other arts, to rely 
not upon the stratifications of fifty years ago, but upon the latest 
thinking and upon an international spectrum of it. 

If "Baroque" and "Classical" are traps for the unsuspecting, 
how much more of a mare's nest is "Rococo." The very word 
rouses our prejudices, for who does not conjure up fluttering 
ribbons, shells, amoretti, and all that is endemically trivial? Put to 
the question of when, where, and how this style evolved, most 
would probably respond that it was a direct outgrowth or final 
phase of Late Baroque style, finding its most congenial home in 
Germany toward the middle of the century. This is, of course, the 
German viewpoint. Yet an American scholar, the late Fiske 
Kimball, explains the origins and spread of the movement quite 
'Otherwise: the style, which has to do indeed with surface 
ornament, did not derive directly from Italian Baroque (under-
stand Bernini) but as a reaction to and continuation of 17th-
century French classicism; its first phase, of incomparable light-

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ness and sinuousity, went from about 1700 to 1730 (cf. Couperin 
Ie grand), and is most properly called sryle Regence: its second 
phase, the genre pittoresque or sryle Louis XV, went from about 1730 
to 1760 (cf. Rameau) and was an elaboration of the first in the 
direction of more eccentricity and distortion. If the new art 
historians were to go beyond this and give us a detailed picture of 
how French and Itali::tn art interrelate during the same years, 
how Tiepolo relates to Watteau, for example, we might gain a 
useful perspective with which to approach the art of Metastasio 
and his composers. It cannot but be clear in any case that we 
have put down the Latin and Mediterranean contributions to 
18th-century art and civilization in favor of the Germanic 
synthesis, with the result that a musical "Rococo" has mostly 
come to be regarded, if regarded at all, as a somewhat unfortunate 
interlude between the peaks of "Deutsche Tiefe." A historical 
approach opens up far more intriguing and challenging possi-
bilities. Germany, and particularly southern, Catholic Germany, 
with Austria, was one of the main battlegrounds for supremacy 
between French and Italian art. 

In his recently published Musical Form and Musical Performance 
Edward T. Cone compares his tour of musical styles to a walk 
through a museum. "We shall begin in the room marked Late 
Baroque, go on (skipping a small one in between variously 
labelled Rococo, Galant, etc.) to the one marked Classical, 
proceed to the one called Romantic •... " He then makes a very 
illuminating comparison between the rhythmic styles found in 
instrumental pieces by Bach, on the one hand, and Haydn, 
Mozart, and Beethoven, on the other. There is a dimension 
lacking in his comparison in that it can offer no hint of how 
the styles of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven came into being. 
That is one of our tasks as historians. We cannot, it goes without 
saying, allow ourselves to skip the "little room" in between. And 
we cannot place our sole emphasis upon instrumental music when 
the 18th century so clearly held opera uppermost in its scheme of 
values. This is merely to say in other terms that we must not lose 
sight of the fine model laid down for us nearly thirty years ago 
in the relevant chapters of Music in Western Civilization. 

The problems of treating the earlier parts of the century are 
complicated by the lack of scholarly editions and studies. Even 
major figures have yet to be evaluated. As the century grows older 
these lacunae diminish. The problem becomes one of where and 

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how to stop. Blume would convince us that there is no dividing 
Classical from Romantic: they are two complementary tenden-
cies within the same style. It is clear enough how this movement 
got started. Around 1760 there was a general reaction against 
the mentality of the previous three decades-call them Rococo, 
genre pittoresque, Louis XV, or what we will. It involved all the arts, 
but not everywhere at once, for the main centers always preceded 
the more provincial ones. Here opera, with its manifold ties to 
literature, dance, painting, architecture, acting, and costume 
serves us well as a guide (see "From Garrick to Gluck: the Re-
form of Theatre and Opera in the mid-Eighteenth Century" in 
PRMA 1967-1968). One advantage of the Classical-Romantic 
formulation is that the storm and stress movements of the 
'sixties and 'seventies fall into place and we achieve some ',,-
perspective of their relationship to preceding and succeeding 
styles. Another advantage is that music is brought in line with 
more recent scholarship concerning the other arts and civiliza-
tion in general. There is no paradox in the evocative cultivation 
of Gothic ruins simultaneously with an archeologically severe 
Greek Revival, often by the same artist. The sentimental ideal-
ization is intense iIi both cases. One of the more interesting 
aspects of the later 18th century is its linking up with the feeling 
for the sublime in the old pre-Rococo "grand manner." The 
painter David reincarnates Poussin, or so Diderot believed and 
was proud to point out in the Salon of 1781. Music invites some 
similar parallels. 

The date of 1800 is an arbitrary terminus yet a valid one. It 
took a decade to realize what an immense step had been taken in 
1789. The world was not the same place after Bonaparte. 
Beethoven before the Eroica and Cherubini before Les Deux 
Journees belong in spirit to the 18th century. With these two 
works they went beyond its spiritual confines. 

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