Coll.
(1779)  1    Sonata in C                      1773  Hamburg.
"       "    " F                      1758  Berlin.
"       "    " B minor                1774  Hamburg.
"       "    " A (Buelow No. 3)        1765  Potsdam.
"       "    " F                      1772  Hamburg.
"       "    " G (Buelow No. 4)        1765  Potsdam.
(1780)  2       "    " G                      1774  Hamburg.
"       "    " F                      1780  Hamburg.
"       "    " A (Buelow No. 2)        1780  Hamburg.
(1781)  3       "    " A minor                1774  Hamburg.
"       "    " D minor (Buelow No. 5)  1766  Potsdam.
"       "    " F minor (Buelow No. 1)  1763  Berlin.
(1783)  4       "    " G                      1781  Hamburg.
"       "    " E minor                1765  Berlin.
(1785)  5       "    " E minor                1784  Hamburg.
"       "    " B flat                 1784  Hamburg.
(1787)  6       "    " D                      1785  Hamburg.
"       "    " E minor                1785  Hamburg.

Without copious musical examples, an analysis of these eighteen sonatas would prove heavy reading.  It will, therefore, be easier for the writer, and certainly pleasanter for his readers, to give a somewhat “freye Fantasia” description of them, laying emphasis naturally on points connected with the special purpose in view.[70]

In the matter of tonality there are some curiosities.  When Beethoven’s 1st Symphony appeared, the opening bars of the introduction became stumbling-stones to the pedagogues of that day.  The work was, without doubt, in the key of C major; yet, instead of opening with the tonic chord of that key, the composer led up to it through the keys of the subdominant, relative minor, and dominant.  No wonder that such a proceeding surprised conventional minds, and that the critics warned Beethoven of the danger of “going his own way.”  But his predecessor, Emanuel Bach, had also strayed from the pedagogic path, a narrow one, yet, in the end, leading to destruction.  In the first book (1779), the 5th Sonata (as shown by the whole of the movement, with exception of the two opening bars) is in the key of F major, yet the first bar is in C minor (minor key of the dominant) and the second, in D minor (relative minor of the principal key).

[Music illustration]

There were, no doubt, respecters of tonality also in Emanuel Bach’s day, to whom such free measures must have seemed foolhardy.  While composing this sonata Bach was, apparently, in daring mood.  The slow middle movement in D minor opens with an inversion of the dominant ninth, and the Finale in F thus—­

[Music illustration]

Of the character of the first section of movements in binary form we have already spoken in the introductory chapter.