By After Johann Philipp Bach - http://www.cpebach.org/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21479656
Sturm und Drang (storm and stress)
A term that is applied to the period in music approximately from 1760 – 1780, a time, when in literature, painting and music, emotionalism was at its height. The term was taken from a play of the time by Friedrich von Klinger in 1776, and it thrived particularly in Austria and Germany. Writers of the time believed that powerful emotions should be the driving force behind their writing, rather than intellectual ones. In painting, desolate and bleak depictions of landscapes and seascapes were popular, as were morbid nightmarish ones. Although this term was well-known in Germany and Austria at the time, it did not appear in English prose until the mid-1800s. The music of this genre contains heightened forms of expression, use of minor keys, dark orchestration and swift changes of mood.
Two of the composers that are associated with this genre are Haydn, particularly his symphonies 49 and 50 and his string quartets. According to Dictionary of Music by Michael Kennedy, ‘these works are marked by new and audacious formal and harmonic features’. The Keyboard works of C.P.E. Bach are examples of the sturm und drang genre.
A Storm on the Mediterranean Coast
By Joseph Vernet - EwFcidNgZTmcMw at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22175173
The following is from Wikipedia ‘The Classical Period (1750–1800) associated with Sturm und Drang is predominantly written in a minor key to convey difficult or depressing sentiments. The principal themes tend to be angular, with large leaps and unpredictable melodic contours. Tempos and dynamics change rapidly and unpredictably in order to reflect strong changes of emotion. Pulsing rhythms and syncopation are common, as are racing lines in the soprano or alto registers. Writing for string instruments features tremelo and sudden, dramatic dynamic changes and accents’.
C. P. E. Bach
In the book by Susan Tomes called The Piano she states that ‘Emmanuel Bach was highly esteemed by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. He said that ‘since a musician cannot move others unless he himself is moved, he must of necessity feel all the emotions he hopes to arouse in his listeners’. Some of Bach’s music has sudden changes of key, dynamics and mood, something that does not occur in his father’s compositions. Susan Tomes summarises Bach’s Free Fantasy as follows, ‘Emmanuel veers from one key to another, constantly changing volume levels and moods, letting his musical lines twist and turn as though searching vainly for a place to rest and interrupting their progress with sharply snatched chords like exclamation points’.
By Heinrich Eduard Winter - This file comes from Gallica Digital Library and is available under the digital ID btv1b8415490p, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16937125
In ‘A History of Western Music it states that ‘the expressive style of C. P. E. Bach and his contemporaries often exploits the element of surprise, with abrupt shifts of harmony, strange modulations, unusual turns of melody, suspenseful pauses, changes of texture, sudden sforzando accents, and the like. The subjective, emotional qualities of this trend, sometimes described by the term Sturm und Drang, a movement in German literature, and art that relished tormented, gloomy, terrified, irrational feelings’.
The clavichord was Bach’s favoured instrument (the clavichord is the most sensitive of all keyboard instruments), although in the last two decades of his life he composed more frequently for the fortepiano. Maurice Hinson, the editor of ‘At the Piano with the Sons of Bach says ‘His music contains abrupt, vacillating emotions. He also loved sudden, remote modulations, startling departures from supposedly cursive statements, melodies shaped like the pitch patterns of emotional speech, painstakingly exact dynamic indications depicting an orator’s emphases, and rhythms imitating an actor’s hesitations and changes of pace. Emmaual’s goal, conscious or unconscious, was to speak emotively without using words’.
References
Dictionary of Music Michael Kennedy Grange Books 2005
The Piano, Susan Tomes, Yale University Press, 2022
Classical Music Encyclopaedia, ed. Stanley Sadie, Flame Tree Publishing, 2014
A History of Western Music, Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca, Norton Publishing, 1996
At the Piano with the Sons of Bach, ed. Maurice Hinson, Alfred Publishing, 1990