The sonatas of Pietro Domenico Paradies (b. 1710), a contemporary of E. Bach, are of interest.  They were published in London by John Johnson, and bear the title, “Sonate di gravicembalo dedicate a sua altezza reale la principessa da Pier Domenico Paradies Napolitano.”  The edition bears no date; but the right of printing and selling granted by George II. bears the date November 28, 1754.  A second edition was published at Amsterdam in 1770.  The sonatas are twelve in number, and consist of only two movements of various character:  some have an Allegro or Presto, followed by a Presto, Allegro, or Gigue; and sometimes (as in Nos. 9 and 11) the second movement is an Andante.  In other sonatas the first movement is in slow time.  These two-movement sonatas would seem to form an intermediate stage between Scarlatti and Emanuel Bach.  As a matter of fact, however, the latter, as we have seen, had published clavier sonatas in three movements long before the appearance of those of Paradies.  In some of the movements in binary form Paradies shows an advance on Scarlatti (see Nos. 1 and 10), for in the second section there is a return, after modulation, to the principal theme.  Some have the theme in the dominant key at the commencement of that section, others not.  Thus we see various stages represented in these sonatas.  The music is delightfully fresh, and, from a technical point of view, interesting.  The influence of Scarlatti both in letter and spirit is strongly felt.  In some of the movements (cf. first movement of No. 8 and of No. 12) there is a feature which Paradies did not inherit from Scarlatti, i.e. the so-called Alberti bass.  Of such a bass Scarlatti gives only slight hints.  Alberti, said to have been its inventor, was a contemporary of Paradies, and the latter may have learnt the trick from him:  there are many examples of its use.  In Alberti, “VIII Sonate Opera Prima,"[72] the opening Allegro of No. 2 has it in forty-four of the forty-six bars of which it consists, and, besides, each section is repeated.  That convenient form of accompaniment soon came into vogue.  It occurs frequently in the sonatas and concertos of J.C.  Bach and Haydn, but it is in the works of second-rate composers that one sees the full use, or rather abuse, made of it.  No. 8 of the Paradies sonatas is particularly attractive, and the second movement forms a not unpleasant reminiscence of Handel’s so-called “Harmonious Blacksmith” variations.

CHAPTER V

HAYDN AND MOZART

I.—­Haydn