PIANO SONATS BY SIGNOR BER FROM KRAKOW MANUSCRIPTS AND CZECH MUSIC CULTURE OF THE SECOND HALF OF 18TH CENTURY

Abstract

Three sonatas have been studied for Signor Ber’s clavicembalo from a music manuscript belonging to the family of famous 18th century Polish aristocrats Czartoryski, currently kept at the National Museum of Poland in Krakow. The famous Ukrainian composer Maksym Berezovskyi was considered the author of the sonatas; however, according to the authorized manuscript sources it was specified that Czech musicians – J. Colizzi, J. Vaňhal and, probably, J. Ber, have written these sonatas. In this case, the manuscript of three sonatas from the Krakow archive is a monument of Czech instrumental music of the second half of the 18th century, and sonatas themselves belong to the pre-classical period, as indicated by the peculiarities of style and musical form. The study of the intonation-thematic and structural features of the Krakow manuscript sonatas showed a clear orientation to the samples of instrumental music of the early classical style, revealed a tendency towards rationality and logical clarity of musical thinking. The correspondence with the basic tendencies of the early classical shaping is observed in the mastery of the sonata form (so far at the pre-classical level), in the principles of structural design of small constructions and large sections of the musical form, in the intonational multielementality of the main themes, in the transparency of the texture, in the predominance of the homophonic harmonic tissue with the harmonic tissue for melody and accompaniment, in the presence of constructions based on figurative-passage technique, etc. All these features, as well as the choice of the major tonalities, and taking into account the timbre capabilities of the harpsichord, influenced the imagery of the sonatas and the nature of their sound. Therefore, the Clavier sonatas of the Krakow manuscript are written in a gallant manner and are examples of instrumental music of the pre-classical period.