Sensitive style

Empfindsamkeit () or Empfindsamer Stil is a style of musical composition and poetry developed in 18th-century Germany, intended to express "true and natural" feelings, and featuring sudden contrasts of mood. It was developed as a contrast to the Baroque ''Affektenlehre'' ( doctrine of the affections), in which a composition (or movement) would have the same affect (e.g., emotion or musical mood) throughout.

Etymology

The German noun "Empfindsamkeit" is usually translated as "sensibility" (in the sense used by Jane Austen in her novel '' Sense and Sensibility''), while the adjective ''empfindsam'' is sometimes rendered as "sentimental" or "ultrasensitive". "Empfindsamkeit" is also sometimes translated, and may even be derived from the English word ''sentimentality'', since it is related to the then-contemporary English literature sentimentality literary movement.

History

The ''empfindsamer Stil'' is similar to and often considered a dialect of the international '' galant'' style, which is marked by simple homophonic textures (a single, clear melody, supported by subordinate chordal accompaniment) and periodic melodic phrases. However, unlike the broader ''galant'' style, ''empfindsamer Stil'' tends to avoid lavish ornamentation.

The dramatic fluidity that was a goal of the ''empfindsamer Stil'' has encouraged historians to view mid-century ''Empfindsamkeit'' as a slightly earlier parallel to the showier and stormier phase called ''Sturm und Drang'' (storm and stress) that emerged around 1770. These two trends are together regarded as "pre- Romantic" manifestations, because of their emphasis on features such as extreme expressive contrasts with disruptive incursions, instability of key, sudden changes of register, dynamic contrast, and exciting orchestral effects, all of which are atypical of musical classicism as practiced in the second half of the eighteenth century.

In music

The ''empfindsamer Stil'' is especially associated with the so-called Berlin School at the Prussian court of Frederick the Great (himself a minor composer, in addition to being a patron). Traits characteristic for composers of this school are a particular fondness for Adagio movements and precise attention to ornaments and dynamics, as well as the liberal use of appoggiaturas ("sigh" figures) and frequent melodic and harmonic chromaticism.

Composers in this style include:
* Carl Friedrich Abel
* C. P. E. Bach, the second eldest son of J. S. Bach
* Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the eldest son of J. S. Bach
* Georg Benda
* Franz Benda
* Anton Fils
* Carl Heinrich Graun
* Johann Gottlieb Graun
* Johann Adolph Hasse
* Gottfried August Homilius
* Johann Gottlieb Janitsch
* Leonardo Leo
* Nicola Porpora
* Johann Joachim Quantz
* Johann Friedrich Reichardt
* Giovanni Alberto Ristori
* Christoph Schaffrath
* Carlos Seixas
* Giuseppe Tartini

Poets in this style include:
* Salomon Gessner

See also

* Galant music

References

Sources

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Further reading

* Apel, Willi. 1969. ''Harvard Dictionary of Music''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. .
* Lang, Paul Henry. 1941. ''Music in Western Civilization''. New York: W. W. Norton, pp. 585ff. Reprinted 1997, .
* Newman, William S. 1963. ''The Sonata in the Classic Era''. A History of the Sonata Idea 2. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

18th-century literature
18th century in music
Classical period (music)

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