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Musical Improvisation and Open
Forms in the Age of Beethoven

Improvisation was a crucial aspect of musical life in Europe from the late
eighteenth century through to the middle of the nineteenth, representing
a central moment in both public occasions and the private lives of many
artists. Composers dedicated themselves to this practice at length while for-
mulating the musical ideas later found at the core of their published works;
improvisation was thus closely linked to composition itself. The full extent
of this relation can be inferred from both private documents and reviews
of concerts featuring improvisations, while these texts also inform us that
composers quite often performed in public as both improvisers and inter-
preters of pieces written by themselves or others. Improvisations presented
in concert were distinguished by a remarkable degree of structural organi-
sation and complexity, demonstrating performers’ consolidated abilities in
composition as well as their familiarity with the rules for improvising out-
lined by theoreticians.

Gianmario Borio is Professor of Musicology at the University of Pavia and

director of the Institute of Music at the Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice.
His publications deal with several aspects of the music of the twentieth cen-
tury, the history of musical concepts and the theory of musical form.

Angela Carone has been a collaborator at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in

Venice since 2013. Among other topics, she has published essays on Carl
Czerny, Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann’s instrumental works and
the concepts of musical work and style in the eighteenth to early nineteenth
century.
Musical Improvisation and Open
Forms in the Age of Beethoven

Edited by
Gianmario Borio and Angela Carone
First published 2018
by Routledge
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business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Gianmario Borio and Angela
Carone; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Gianmario Borio and Angela Carone to be identified
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individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Borio, Gianmario, editor. | Carone, Angela, editor.
Title: Musical improvisation and open forms in the age of
Beethoven / edited by Gianmario Borio and Angela Carone.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY:
Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017040340 | ISBN 9781138222960 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315406381 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Improvisation (Music)—History—19th century. |
Musical form—History—19th century.
Classification: LCC ML430.7 .M87 2018 | DDC 781.3/609033—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040340

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Contents

Notes on contributors vii

Introduction 1
Gianmario B orio and A ngela Carone

Part I
Improvisation and music theory 5

1 Formal elements of instrumental improvisation: evidence

from written documentation, 1770–1840 7
A ngela Carone

2 Musical form in improvisation treatises in the age of Beethoven 19

Jan Philipp S pric k

3 ‘La solita cadenza’? Vocal improvisation, embellishments and

fioriture in opera from the late eighteenth to the first half
of the nineteenth century 30
T orsten M ario Augenstein

4 ‘Free forms’ in German music theory and the Romantic

conception of time 62
Gianmario B orio

Part II
From improvisation to composition 85

5 Fantastical forms: formal functionality in improvisational

genres of the Classical era 87
W illiam E . Caplin
vi Contents
6 Four piano fantasias by Hummel: improvisation,
motivic processing, harmonic enterprise and the
‘memory function’ 115
Rohan H . S tewart- M a c D onald

7 A step to the ‘Wanderer’. Schubert’s early Fantasia-Sonata

in C minor (D. 48) 134
Pieter Bergé

8 Didacticism and display in the capriccio and prelude

for violin, 1785–1840 149
Catherine C oppola

Part III
Freedom as a tool for musical form 161

9 ‘Quasi una fantasia’? The legacy of improvisational

practice in Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonatas 163
H ans - Joachim H inrichsen

10 Improvisation practices in Beethoven’s Kleinere Stücke 178

M arco Targa

11 The fate of the antepenultimate: fantasy and closure in

the Classical style 193
S cott Burnham

12 ‘Ad arbitrio dei cantanti’: vocal cadenzas and

ornamentation in early nineteenth-century opera 206
Giorgio Pagannone

Index 235
Contributors

Torsten Mario Augenstein (1965) studied Musicology (Ludwig Finscher,

Herbert Schneider) and Romance Philology (Italian and Portuguese
studies) at the University of Heidelberg; studentship at the Università de-
gli Studi di Palermo; 2004 graduation in Musicology at the University of
Heidelberg (Silke Leopold). Since 2004: research and teaching in Musi-
cology, Theory of Music and Librettology at the University of Muenster,
University of Music Karlsruhe, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,
Dep. of Languages. Focus in research: music of the fifteenth to twenti-
eth century, sacred music of the fifteenth to eighteenth century; opera of
the seventeenth to nineteenth century; techniques of singing practise and
aesthetics in the eighteenth century; librettology.
Pieter Bergé is professor of Music History, Analysis and Music Theory at
the University of Leuven, Belgium. His main research areas are German
opera during the Weimar Republic and the formal analysis of Classical
and early Romantic music. He has published two monographs on operas
by Arnold Schoenberg, and is the co-editor of four volumes on musical
analysis: Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata. Perspectives on Analysis and Per-
formance (2009); Musical Form, Forms & Formenlehre (2009); Beethoven’s
Tempest Sonata (First Movement). Five Annotated Analyses for Perform-
ers and Scholars (2012); and What is a Cadence? Theoretical and A
­ nalytical
Perspectives on Cadences in the Classical Repertoire (2015). Together with
Steven Vande Moortele and Nathan J. Martin, he is the chief editor of
the journal Music Theory and Analysis (mtajournal.be). He served as
the president of the Dutch-Flemish Society for Music Theory from 2006
till 2014. Currently, he is the artistic director of the Leuven Novecento
­Festival for twentieth-century music.
Gianmario Borio is professor of Musicology at the University of Pavia
and director of the Institute of Music at the Giorgio Cini Foundation,
Venice. In 1999, he was awarded the Dent Medal by the Royal Musical
Association. In 2013, he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at The
­Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. His publications deal
with several aspects of the music of the twentieth century (theory and
viii Contributors
aesthetics, political background, audiovisual experience), with the his-
tory of musical concepts and the theory of musical form. He is fellow of
the Academia Europea.
Scott Burnham has taught in the Music Department of Princeton Uni-
versity since 1989. He served as Chair of the Music Department from
2000 to 2008, and he is currently Scheide Professor of Music History. In
2013, Burnham was granted Princeton University’s Howard T. Behrman
Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities. His most re-
cent book, Mozart’s Grace, won the 2014 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the
American Musicological Society.
William E. Caplin is James McGill Professor of Music Theory at the Schulich
School of Music, McGill University, specializing in the theory of musical
form and the history of harmonic and rhythmic theory in the modern
era. His book Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the In-
strumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (Oxford 1998) won
the 1999 Wallace Berry Book Award from the Society for Music T ­ heory
(SMT); it has now been revised as the textbook Analyzing Classical Form,
published in November 2013 by OUP. In 2009, he co-authored (with
James Hepokoski and James Webster, and edited by Pieter Bergé) Musi-
cal Form, Forms, & Formenlehre. Caplin publishes in the leading journals
of his discipline (e.g. Music Theory Spectrum, Journal of the American
Musicological Society, Eighteenth-Century Music) and contributes book
chapters to major collections of essays (e.g. Cambridge History of Western
Music Theory, Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, Beethoven’s “Tempest”
Sonata). A former president of the SMT, he has presented many key-
note addresses, guest lectures, and workshops in North ­A merican and
­Europe. He has received major research grants from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada and recently completed
a two-year leave supported by a Killam Research Fellowship from the
Canada Council of the Arts on the project ‘Cadence: A Study of Closure
in Tonal Music’.
Angela Carone has been a collaborator at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in
Venice since 2013. After gaining degrees in Piano and Musicology, she
earned the Music Teaching Qualification for the High School Level
and a Ph.D. in Musicology and Philology at the University of Pavia.
As post-doctoral research fellow (Pavia, 2008–2010 and 2014–2015) she
studied Formenlehre, the reception of Romantic music, and creative
processes in twentieth century music. In 2016 and 2017 she has taught
­Music Aesthetics at Ca’ Foscari University (Venice). Among other top-
ics, she has published essays on Carl Czerny, Franz Schubert and Robert
Schumann’s instrumental works, the concepts of musical work and style
in eighteenth–early nineteenth century, and the process of creation in
Luciano Berio, Giacinto Scelsi and Roman Vlad music.
 Contributors ix
Catherine Coppola is a lecturer in Music History and Director of Undergrad-
uate Studies in Music at Hunter College of the City University of New
York. Her scholarly interests include genre, performance, and musical
borrowing, and her current project focuses on the treatment of women
in Mozart’s operas. Her work has been published in 19th-Century Music,
The Journal of the Society for Textual Scholarship and Teaching Music.
She has presented papers for the Giorgio Cini Foundation, American
Bach Society, the International Interdisciplinary Conference of the Soci-
ety for Textual Scholarship, and the NYS-American Musicological Soci-
ety. In addition to a Ph.D., she holds a M.M. in Piano performance from
the Manhattan School of Music, having studied with Seymour Lipkin.
With violinist Lucy Morganstern and with vocalists Paul Houghtaling
and Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, she currently performs duo repertoire.
Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen gained a degree in Musicology at the Freie Uni-
versität in Berlin, followed by a Ph.D. at the same university with a dis-
sertation entitled Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung der Sonatenform in der
Instrumentalmusik Franz Schuberts (Tutzing 1994). Again, at the FU, in
1998 he obtained Qualification with a work on the history of the prac-
tice of musical interpretation and the methodological problems involved
(Musikalische Interpretation. Hans von Bülow, Stuttgart 1999). Since 1999
he has been full professor of Musicology at the University of Zurich,
and currently contributes to editing the Archiv für Musikwissenschaft
and Schubert: Perspektiven. His publications focus on the history and
aesthetics of music from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, with
particular attention given to interpretation and the history of recep-
tion. He has recently published the volumes Franz Schubert, Munich
2011, and Beethoven. Die Klaviersonaten, Kassel 2013, and edited the
­Bruckner-Handbuch, Stuttgart / Kassel 2010.
Giorgio Pagannone is Professor of History of Music at the University of
­Chieti-Pescara. His interests range from melodrama to instrumental
music of eighteenth to nineteenth century, music education and musi-
cal analysis. He has published various articles and essays on the melodic
structures and form of nineteenth century opera. He has written a book
on Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K. 491 (Rome 2006) and a book on the li-
bretto of Cammarano – Donizetti’s Pia de’ Tolomei (Florence 2006). He
also worked on critical edition of this opera, that has been published by
BMG/Ricordi. He edited the book Insegnare il melodramma (Teaching
Melodrama), published by Pensa Multimedia, 2010.
Jan Philipp Sprick is Professor of Music Theory at the Hochschule für
Musik und Theater Rostock/Germany. He studied Music Theory, Viola,
Musicology and History in Hamburg, Harvard and Berlin. In 2010, he
received his Ph.D. from Humboldt Universität in Berlin. His research in-
terests include the history of music theory, musical ambivalence and the
x Contributors
relation of music theory and musicology. From 2009 to 2013 he served
as co-editor of the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie. In 2012,
he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Music of the
University of Chicago.
Rohan H. Stewart-MacDonald is honorary member of the Centro Studi
­Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. He studied at St Catharine’s College,
Cambridge between 1993 and 2001 and worked as Director of Studies in
Music and Director of Music at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge,
from 2004 until 2009. Since completing his Ph.D., he has specialised in
British music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, publishing New
Perspectives on the Keyboard Sonatas of Muzio Clementi in 2006 ­(Quaderni
Clementiani, 2). In 2012, with Roberto Illiano, he co-edited and contrib-
uted to the multi-author, multi-lingual Jan Ladislav Dussek: A Bohemian
Composer «en voyage» through Europe (Quaderni Clementiani, 4). His re-
search interests have broadened to encompass eighteenth-century I­ talian
symphonism; nineteenth-century British symphonism; concert life in
Britain in the early nineteenth century and the early-Romantic virtuoso
concerto. Stewart-MacDonald has returned to performing as a solo pia-
nist, with programmes that include his own arrangements of American
popular music from the middle decades of the twentieth century.
Marco Targa was awarded his Ph.D. in Music History and Criticism at the
University of Turin. He devotes himself to the study of Italian opera and
is the author of the book Puccini e la Giovane Scuola. Drammaturgia mu-
sicale dell’opera italiana di fine Ottocento (Turin – Bologna 2012). He has
published articles in reviews and books about Debussy, nineteenth cen-
tury Formenlehre and silent film music. His recent publications include:
‘Sonata e concerto a confronto. Hepokoski-Darcy e la teoria delle forme
strumentali della “Wiener Klassik”’ (Il Saggiatore musicale, 2012), and
‘The Silent Opera: The Beginnings of Melodrama in Cinema’, in Film
music. Practices and Methodologies (Turin 2014). He has taught Music
History at conservatories in Venice and in Siena.
Introduction
Gianmario Borio and Angela Carone

From the late eighteenth century through to the middle of the nineteenth,
improvisation represented a central moment in both public occasions and
the private lives of many artists. Composers dedicated themselves to this
practice at length while formulating the musical ideas later found at the
core of their published works; improvisation was thus closely linked to
composition itself. The full extent of this relation can be inferred from
both private documents and reviews of concerts featuring improvisations;
these texts also inform us that composers such as Beethoven, Clementi,
Hummel, Mendelssohn and Mozart quite often performed in public as
both improvisers and interpreters of pieces written by themselves or oth-
ers. Improvisations presented at concerts were distinguished by a remark-
able degree of structural organisation and complexity, demonstrating
performers’ abilities in composition as well as their familiarity with the
rules for improvising outlined by theoreticians. Attention to formal detail
was anything but secondary in improvisations, which at times were articu-
lated into structures that could not be entirely ascribed to codified models.
Conversely, when performing written pieces, composer-improvisers (and,
in the domain of vocal music, singers) could transfer the same inclination
towards freedom that continued to represent an indispensable aspect of
improvisation.
The intertwining of improvisation and formal organisation is dealt with
systematically in the present volume, primarily based on a close exami-
nation of a wide range of historical documentation: treatises, performers’
notebooks, biographies, autobiographies, letters, sketches and reviews. The
twelve chapters illustrate various formal typologies that occurred in impro-
vised instrumental and vocal pieces in Italy, France and Germany, offer-
ing information as to the rules established by theoreticians and performers
to provide such pieces with a coherent layout. Precisely on account of the
diligence with which it was publicly and privately practised, improvisation
could become part of composition and have a bearing on decisions as to
form, resulting in moments of opening both in the macrostructure and in
the construction of brief structural elements.
2 Gianmario Borio and Angela Carone
An accurate investigation of the sources dating to the late eighteenth
century through the mid-nineteenth may help to clarify the relationship
between improvisation and composition; the widely diffused picture, ac-
cording to which musicians or singers who improvised did no more than
follow the free and untrammelled flow of their own ideas, will hardly find
a confirmation in such a historical reconstruction. Indeed, since C. P. E.
Bach’s Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (1753–1762), sev-
eral treatises on instrumental didactics contain indications as to how to
carry out a proper improvisation, providing in particular the harmonic
rules necessary to achieve such an aim and insisting on the need to elab-
orate and combine ideas according to a logic and coherence (see Part I,
Chapter 2). The tangencies between theoretical-compositional thought and
improvisational practice are furthermore confirmed by a number of auto-
graph documents: the music which was extemporaneously played or sung
was often the result of memorised formulas and corresponded to an elabo-
ration in real time of ideas that had been outlined at an earlier stage (Part I,
Chapters 1 and 3). The insertion, within written pieces, of various proce-
dures of improvisation as illustrated in treatises also confirms how thin the
borderline could be between improvisational and compositional practices,
and how they could influence one another, determining openness in musi-
cal forms. In the present volume the term ‘open form’ defines a succession
of recognisable sections or phraseological units which escape the princi-
ples of musical form, established through the compositional techniques of
Classicism and later illustrated in musical treatises. This phenomenon was
so widespread that open forms, in particular fantasias, and the dialectics
underlying their creation were given ample space in theoretical reflection
as early as the second half of the nineteenth century beginning with Adolf
Bernhard Marx. Furthermore, the new formal concepts that emerged in
the post-Beethoven era show significant tangencies with the contemporary
approach to the concept of time, developed by Romantic thinkers (Part I,
Chapter 4).
Not by chance, fantasias, capricci and preludes can be seen as reflections
of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century improvisational practices. The ex-
traordinary number of pieces published under these titles is itself indica-
tive of their wide circulation. Once fixed on paper, fantasias, capricci and
preludes all contain stylistic characteristics that can be traced to ‘gestures’
belonging to improvisation and are responsible for the ambiguous character
of some formal sections. However, these same pieces (in particular pieces
entitled Fantasia or Capriccio by C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Clementi,
Beethoven) display elements of syntax that are closely related to those found
in more conventional genres; sometimes, these pieces only give ‘an incipi-
ent sense’ of the formal functionality of the type exhibited in conventional
forms (Part II, Chapter 5). In some cases, as in Hummel fantasias, one could
go so far as to say that it is impossible to distinguish the exact way in which
codified forms and free forms come into contact, that is to say whether the
 Introduction 3
composer injected the former into the latter or vice versa (Part II, Chapter 6).
This turns out to be particularly significant in cases in which an ‘open’ piece
shows affinities with a sonata-type formal articulation: Schubert’s W­ anderer
Fantasia is a paradigmatic example (Part II, Chapter 7). In the case of
­Beethoven the dialectics between strictness and freedom might emerge from
the early stages of the creative process, as testified by the draft for the first
movement of the Piano Sonata, Op. 31, No. 2 and the first sketch for the
opening movement of Op. 109 (Part III, Chapter 9).
In sonatas, variations, polonaises and rondos by Beethoven and his con-
temporaries, one finds unexpected episodes marked by virtuoso writing and
daring modulations, in addition to sections that, demonstrating the exist-
ence of ‘a kind of hybridisation’ between different musical forms, can only
with some difficulty be justified by the formal norms of the time (Part III,
Chapter 10). These two phenomena can be readily explained by composers’
activity as improvisers and in particular the impact of keyboard fantasias,
which were quite widespread in the late eighteenth century. Composers
could alter and ‘open’ a standardised formal structure, if only for an iso-
lated moment, for example in violin caprices written in sonata-rondo form
and ‘thematically open-ended’ (Part II, Chapter 8) or in cadenzas of instru-
mental and vocal pieces. These cadenzas, before the expected and delayed
return of the tonic, at times presented chromatic passages or extended or-
namentations (on the antepenultimate or predominant harmony), often ‘an
improvised digest of the thematic content of the movement’, whose origins
lie exactly in improvisation (Part III, Chapter 11). Likewise, in the opera
repertoire the composers wrote brief cadenzas in smaller note-heads, whose
end was marked by a fermata: they were only intended as an initial sugges-
tion for the singer, allowing them to improvise. It was equally frequent for
the singers to introduce ‘substitution figures’ when performing pieces with
a strophic structure; these figures were memorised or written beforehand
and not actually extemporised, and their presence drastically modified both
the composer’s will as notated on paper and the original formal structure of
the piece (Part III, Chapter 12). Thus, the way in which a dialectic between
improvisation and composition came about in the period between the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is vigorously demonstrated, both
directly and indirectly, by the great variety of often inextricably intertwined
works by composers, theorists, instrumentalists and singers. Its echoes took
a long time to die away and left a strong mark on open forms of instrumental
music in the decades to come.

We would like to express our warmest thanks to all those who have contrib-
uted to this book in one way or another. First and foremost, the authors of
the chapters for their generosity in sharing knowledge and their openness
towards new perspectives. This group of scholars first presented the results
of their research during the conference Musical Improvisation in the Age of
Beethoven and ‘Open Forms’, held in Venice at the Giorgio Cini Foundation
4 Gianmario Borio and Angela Carone
on 28 and 29 November 2014, and then further addressed each subject mat-
ter in view of the organic unity of the book. Susanna Pasticci, Rudolf Rasch,
Giorgio Sanguinetti and Elaine Sisman also took part in the conference
and we thank them for their critical commentaries and suggestions as well.
Warm thanks are also due to Federica Rovelli (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn) for
her precious help in retrieving documents and to Sally Davies, who meticu-
lously reread the final version of the chapters and helped to keep the termi-
nology uniform.
Part I

Improvisation and music theory

1 Formal elements of
instrumental improvisation:
evidence from written
documentation, 1770–1840
Angela Carone

Manifold improvisations
In the age of Beethoven, the two practices of improvising and organising
musical ideas according to the principles of traditional forms were far from
being mutually exclusive. Both reviews and biographical texts dating be-
tween 1770 and 1827, the lifespan of Beethoven, and documents published
years later, which however refer to the period in question, are in this sense
extremely important. They contain a considerable amount of information as
to the indispensable characteristics of improvised pieces – virtuosity, origi-
nality, spontaneity and a polished performance – and offer details as to their
formal features as well. The way in which improvised pieces were organised
did not go unnoticed among critics of the time, as can be seen in an article
published in the Revue musicale in 1829: here, it appears that during the
performance of the Romanza for voice and violin Le songe de Tartini by
­Auguste-Mathieu Panseron, the violinist Pierre Baillot ‘improvised a fer-
mata, as remarkable for its form as it was for its perfect execution, that made
an outstanding effect’ (Anon., 1829, p. 104). Describing an improvisation by
the pianist Hieronymus Payer that same year, François-Joseph Fétis’ writ-
ing for the aforementioned revue observed instead that ‘This artist has a
strong musical organisation’ (Fétis, 1829, p. 180).
These words allow us to recognise one important principle: for an improv-
isation to be positively evaluated, even if it was limited to a brief episode
within a composed piece (as with the Romanza played by Baillot), more of-
ten than not it had to be provided with a well-defined form, which therefore
represented an aspect of the musical performance that was anything but
negligible. In particular, in order to make a positive impression, the improv-
isation had to present a treatment of the musical material that was similar to
the one found in a sonata or a strict contrapuntal construction.
The act of improvisation frequently coincided with a formal organisation
based on the development of two themes, as in a sonata, which can be ex-
plained by the improviser’s double role as a composer and a performer. It
was only inevitable for these musicians to transfer their own formal thought,
honed during their work on written compositions, to pieces performed
8 Angela Carone
extemporaneously. Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s approach to improvisation,
as described in 1830 in a column of Le Globe, is in this sense emblematic:

Improvising, for [Hummel], is not a work of mechanism and memory;

he is not content to take a theme, modulate it and embellish it for a few
minutes, then to leave it there to recommence the same operation on a
second theme, nay even on a third; no, he seeks a thought, and develops
it in all its facets and daring.
(Anon., 1830, cited in Stewart-MacDonald, 2011, p. 130)

This way of conceiving an improvisation, centred on the development of

themes and not simply on their continuous embellishment with rapid scales
and arpeggios, finds a significant precedent in Beethoven who, compared to
other musicians of the time, shows himself

to the greatest advantage in improvisation, and here, indeed, it is most

extraordinary with what lightness and yet firmness in the succession of
ideas. Beethoven not only varies a theme given to him on the spur of the
moment by figuration (with which many a virtuoso makes his fortune …),
but really develops it. Since the death of Mozart, who in this respect is
… still the non plus ultra, [nobody has] enjoyed this kind of pleasure to
the degree in which it is provided by Beethoven.
(Anon., 1798–99, col. 525, cited in Forbes, 19733, p. 205)

One of the most recurring forms used during improvisations was the theme
with variations, to such an extent that in 1821 Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel
even conceived a mechanical instrument capable of automatically generat-
ing variations, referred to as the Componium. It was made up of two parts:
the Orchestrion, a mechanical organ with rolls connected to the keyboard,
and the Componium itself, made up of two barrels in which a musical theme
and seven composed-out variations could be inserted, all divided into two-­
bar segments. As the barrels rotated, the Componium played one two-bar
segment at a time, alternating between the two barrels. The results of this
constant switchover between variations were unpredictable, giving the im-
pression that the machine was actually improvising (Cannon Levin, 2009,
pp. 74–75).1 The theme-and-variation form was turned to quite often during
live improvisations for two main reasons. As compared to other forms, it
provided more room for an alternation of virtuoso passages and cantabile
moments (‘Fingerhexerey [und] affektierte Süßlichkeit’, to use an expression
common among observers of the time) (Rochlitz, 1798, p. 51), and it also
allowed the public to become ‘involved’ to a remarkable degree. In a few
letters written in the 1780s, Mozart recounts how the nobleman who was
hosting the musical evening suggested the theme to be extemporaneously
varied; and, Mozart also tells us that, during these events, two improvisers
were often invited to take part in a true competition. The one held in 1781
 Formal elements of instrumental improvisation 9
between Mozart himself and Muzio Clementi, organised by E ­ mperor
­Joseph II in Vienna, has become almost legendary. At the beginning of the
­contest Mozart ‘improvised [praeludierte] and played variations’; then the
two ­composers selected a theme from some sonatas by Paisiello and de-
veloped it on two pianos. Mozart pointed out that while working out the
theme at the instrument, he gave it ‘the best construction’ he could (Komlós,
1989, p. 4).
Records from the time suggest a plausible hypothesis as to the meaning
of the expression ‘the best construction’, used by Mozart, which might im-
plicitly indicate that this improvised piece was in the strictest of musical
forms: the fugue. In some cases, the latter was improvised immediately after
a few variations or following a piece in another form. An example of this
is ­provided once again by Mozart who, during a soirée musicale in which
­Johann Georg Albrechtsberger also participated, asked the latter to pro-
pose a theme. In 1830, Abbé Maximilian Stadler wrote in his autobiography
that

Mozart sat down and improvised on this theme for an hour in such a
way as to excite general admiration by means of variations and fugues
(in which he never departed from the theme), [proving] that he was a
master of every aspect of the musician’s art.
(Stadler, before 1830, cited in Deutsch, 1965, p. 543)

Similarly, in 1803 an improvisation by the Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler took

place in the home of the librettist Joseph Ferdinand Sonnleithner, who had
organised a soirée musicale in Vogler’s honour and invited B
­ eethoven among
other composers. According to the account provided by Johann ­Gänsbacher,
who participated in the event and later became a pupil of the Abbé, ‘Vogler
improvised at the piano on a theme given to him by Beethoven, 4½ ­measures
long, first as an Adagio and then fugued. Vogler then gave Beethoven a
theme of three measures (the scale of C major, alla breve)’ (Frölich, 1845,
p. 55). Furthermore, Gänsbacher notes that Beethoven’s excellent piano-
forte playing,

combined with an abundance of the most beautiful thoughts, surprised

me beyond measure, but could not stir up the enthusiasm on me which
had been inspired by Vogler’s learned playing, which was beyond paral-
lel in its harmonic and contrapuntal treatment.
(Ibidem)

Beethoven himself improvised fugues during his public concerts; in his case,
just as for other composers of the time, being able to extemporaneously per-
form a fugue was something that he owed to his apprenticeship as an organist
(Rampe, 2011). The fugue was only one of the forms that he turned to dur-
ing his improvisations, and whichever form he adopted, contemporaneous
10 Angela Carone
accounts inform us that he improvised ‘with kindly readiness and with that
wealth of ideas which always characterized his impromptu playing as much,
or often more, than his written works’ (Forbes, 19733, p. 680). This opinion of
Beethoven’s improvisations was formulated by his student Carl Czerny, who
heard him improvise on many occasions and who underlined that fact that he
created the greatest impression during the first years of his sojourn in Vienna
and even made Mozart wonder. Czerny added that his maestro’s improvisa-
tions were of the most varied kind, ‘whether he was treating themes chosen
by himself or set for him by others’;2 above all, in his role as a pedagogue,
Czerny devised a classification of these improvisations based precisely on the
form adopted. Beethoven’s improvisations could have been:

1. In the form of the first movement or final rondo of a sonata, with a

first part in which he concluded in a regular manner while also invent-
ing a subordinate theme in a related key, he freely abandoned himself to
his enthusiasm in a free manner in the second part, yet with all possible
uses of the motive. In an allegro tempo the whole was enlivened through
bravura passages that were still more difficult than those we found in
his works.
2. In free-variation forms, about, for example, his Choral-Fantasia,
Op. 80, or the choral finale of his Ninth Symphony, both of which give a
faithful illustration of his improvisations in this form.
3. In the mixed genre where, in potpourri style, one thought follows
upon another, as in his solo Fantasia, Op. 77. Often a few notes would
suffice to enable him to improvise an entire piece (as, for instance, the
Finale of the third Sonata, D major, Op. 10).
(Czerny, 1963, p. 21)

Between amorphous performances and articulated structures:

the prelude and the fantasia
Beethoven was in the habit of giving his own improvisations a formal profile
that was so well defined as to be comparable with the works he composed and
that the public was acquainted with, as his student Czerny clearly implies.
And, precisely because he was inclined towards this approach, he often gave
negative judgements of the improvisations of other musicians which, on the
contrary, were lacking in this respect; in such cases, Beethoven maintained
that the musician had not actually improvised, but ‘just preluded a little’
(Wegeler and Ries, 1838, p. 110). Mozart defined the nature of this preluding
in a letter written to his father in 1778 in which he implies that it consisted
mainly in passing ‘from one key into another’.3
The difference between mere preluding and a true improvisation, which
was quite clear to both Beethoven and Mozart, consisted in the presence of an
extended and articulated organisation of musical ideas and not merely in the
predominance of scale or arpeggio figures in various tonalities set out over
 Formal elements of instrumental improvisation 11
4
a harmonic outline. These latter characteristics served the aim of ‘prelud-
ing’ that, as can be surmised from most eighteenth- and ­n ineteenth-century
theoretical and lexicographical sources, generally indicates an extempora-
neous act intended to try out the instrument and warm up the fingers before
playing a larger-scale composition; the prelude, as François-Henri-Joseph
Castil-Blaze wrote in 1825, retracing the entry of the same name found in
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de musique (1768), is played ‘as an in-
troduction, to ensure that the instrument is tuned, to request silence, and
to prepare the ear for that which will shortly be heard’ ­(Castil-Blaze, 1825).5
The very essence of the act of improvisation was however associated with
another term, which was also used as a verb: fantasia ( fantasieren). Sources
inform us that in 1787, at the end of a concert in Prague, Mozart ‘improvised
[ fantasierte] a good half hour on the pianoforte’ and it is perfectly legitimate
to imagine that such long performances must have included a variety of
styles (contrapuntal and galant), perhaps alternating with one another in a
series of variations (Komlós, 1991, p. 34). These improvisations could natu-
rally take the form of independent pieces, in which case they corresponded
to the free fantasia, whose characteristics were illustrated in 1789 by Daniel
Gottlob Türk:

a fantas[ia] is called free when its creator holds neither to a certain main
subject (theme) nor to metre or rhythm (although for some thoughts a
metre could be used), when he expresses various and often contrasting
characters, in short, when he follows his whims completely without at-
tempting to work out a specific plan.
(Türk, [1789] 1967, p. 395)

At least until the late eighteenth century, the term fantasia and its usage as
a verb covers a semantic spectrum ample enough to indicate even a perfor-
mance that may well have been extemporaneous, but that took the form of
an ‘elaboration of a given theme [Ausführung eines gegbenes Themas]’, with-
out however implying the use of a precise form (Komlós, 1991, p. 32). At the
beginning of the following century, fantasias, while continuing to represent
the utmost spontaneous expression of their composer’s ideas and the fruit of
a complete immersion in one’s self and one’s art (the prerogative of the artist
of genius, a central figure in the aesthetics of the time), show an ever-clearer
organisation and elaboration of ideas, to the point that their absence pro-
vided a reason for listeners to disapprove. This change in perspective is clear
as early as 1802. On the one hand, Heinrich Christoph Koch continues to
emphasise the freedom from conventional rules that characterised the fan-
tasia (‘one binds oneself neither to form nor main key … but portrays his
sequence of ideas sometimes in truly coherent melodic sections, sometimes
more loosely arranged, and sometimes also simply as diversely arpeggiated
chords following one another’) (Koch, [1802] 2001, cited in Richards, 2001,
p. 40); and, on the other, Wenzel Johann Tomaschek, in describing a fantasia
12 Angela Carone
improvised by Jan Ladislav Dussek that same year, made the authoritarian
observation that, given that it ‘consisted mainly of mere broken chords, [it]
was utterly worthless’ (Tomaschek, 1845–50, fasc. 4, pp. 393–94, cited in
Crew, 1964, p. 128). During the nineteenth century, even an improvised fan-
tasia had to possess a number of clearly recognisable formal requisites. This
was still perfectly valid in 1836, when Fétis underlined that during a concert
held by Moscheles in Bruxelles the improvisation performed could not be
reduced to a series of variations on different themes, but was provided with
a more articulated structure.

After an introduction, a simple formal device that is part of all fanta-

sias, and in which one artist can only be distinguished from the other
by his ability in developing the motif, Moscheles, – Fétis writes – taking
hold of his three motives as though to make a single compact entity
out of them, first played a free fantasia, [the fruit] of his imagination,
in which slight references to the theme were scattered here and there
in order to prepare the ear to grasp their developments. These themes
then appeared one after another, were elaborated by the famous pianist,
who connected them to each other through the best possible transitions,
and were then brought together and used reciprocally as accompani-
ment with infinite skill, even though there were no apparent relations
among them. … Everything [pointed towards] a limpid thought and a
rich ­i magination, but was well regulated in an admirable way.
(Fétis, 1836, p. 30)

Social changes, private composing habits and the

‘new’ practice of improvisation
The nineteenth-century concert hall audiences were no longer aristocratic
and musically knowledgeable, but largely bourgeois and lacking in a solid
technical acquaintance with music. Their variable degree of cultural edu-
cation was no doubt a further decisive factor in the ever-growing affirma-
tion of a practice of improvisation in which the materials were organised in
a more sharply defined manner, even though they took the form of ‘open’
structures and, from a harmonic point of view, were also not entirely ascrib-
able to the traditional type (Rink, 1992, p. 305). In any case, as in previous
periods as well, when faced with an improvised piece whose form bordered
on perfection, listeners were legitimately sceptical as to whether its origin
actually was extemporaneous, and at times could even affirm with complete
certainty that the performer at hand ‘had prepared a brilliant fantasia’.6
Suspicions of this kind were even raised in the case of Mozart. According to
Maximilian Stadler:

In the art of improvisation Mozart had no equal. His improvisations

were as well-ordered as if he had had them lying written out before
 Formal elements of instrumental improvisation 13
him. This led several to think that, when he performed an improvisa-
tion in public, he must have thought everything out, and practised it,
beforehand.
(Stadler, before 1830, cited in Deutsch, 1965, p. 543)

These doubts were not entirely unmotivated: surprisingly, none other than
Beethoven himself confirms that the practice of preparing a rough outline
for the pieces to be performed during an improvisation was a widespread
habit among musicians; this allowed them to establish a formal structure
in a more or less detailed way. On a sketch for the Lied Sehnsucht, WoO
134, Beethoven wrote a phrase that leaves no room for misunderstanding:
‘Lied variirt am Ende Fuge und mit pianissimo aufgehört [.] Auf diese Art
jede Fantasie entworfen und hernach im Theater ausgeführt’ [‘Variations
on a Lied, a fugue at the end and finishing pianissimo [.] Model every im-
provisation on this and perform it afterwards in the theatre’]. [Transcrip-
tion and translation from German by Julia Ronge, Beethoven-Haus, Bonn]
(Figure 1.1).
The form given to an improvised piece, and the way in which its parts fol-
lowed one another, could therefore be the result of a premeditated, almost
compositional act – suffice it to recall that the same pair of forms suggested
in Beethoven’s sketch mentioned above is found in his 15 Variations and

Figure 1.1 S
ketch for the Lied Sehnsucht, WoO 134. Beethoven-Haus Bonn,
Sammlung H. C. Bodmer, HCB Mh 75, c. 3verso. Courtesy of ­Beethoven-
Haus, Bonn.
14 Angela Carone
Fugue in E major, Op. 35 (Eroica Variations), the 33 Variations in C major,
Op. 120 (Diabelli Variations), in the ones found in the final movement of the
Piano Sonata in E major, Op. 109 and in the 8 Variations in F major, WoO 76
on the theme Tändeln und Scherzen. Nor should one forget, in any case, that
composition treatises of the time also provided proper rules as to the way in
which to carry out an improvisation.7 At other times, the form at which one
arrived could be the fruit of a sustained practical preparation, which was
necessary to overcome the embarrassment of having to improvise in public.
This was the case with Hummel, who confessed that he always aimed

at good connexion and succession of ideas, at strictness of rythm [sic.],

at variety of character, at changes of colouring, at the avoiding of great
diffusiveness (which easily degenerates into monotony) … to ground
my Fantasia on the flow of my own ideas, as also, occasionaly [sic.] to
weave among them some known Thema or subjects … quite freely and
on the spur of the moment … When by degrees the taste and judgement
were correctly formed; and when, after a couple of years quiet study in
my chamber … I ventured to extemporize before a few persons only …
Lastly, when I had succeeded in attaining such firmness and certainty in
all this, as to be able to satisfy both parties equally, I ventured to offer
myself before the public.
(Hummel, 1828, vol. 3, p. 74, cited in Kroll, 2007, pp. 259–60)

Regardless of the form given to an improvised piece, and irrespectively of

whether it was brought to life spontaneously or otherwise, extemporaneous
performance was a true form of ‘public display’, either when two m
­ usicians
performed together on the stage (as on one occasion with Hummel and
­Moscheles)8 or whether an improvisation was entrusted to a single inter-
preter. In many cases, musicians waited for the end of their concerts to
astonish the public with their gifts as improvisers, as for example in the
following concerts held by Beethoven in Vienna in 1800, Hummel in Paris in
1825 and Liszt in Frankfurt am Main in 1840 (cited, respectively, in Forbes,
19733, p. 255; Kroll, 2007, p. 117; Saffle, 1994, p. 232):
Vienna, Royal Imperial Court Theatre, 2 April 1800
A grand symphony by the late Kappelmeister Mozart.
An aria from The Creation by … Haydn, sung by Mlle. Saal.
A grand Concerto [Op. 19, No. 2] for the pianoforte, played and composed
by Herr Ludwig van Beethoven.
A Septet … composed by Herr Ludwig van Beethoven for four stringed
and three wind-instruments, played by Herren Schuppanzigh, Schreiber,
Schindlecker, Bär, Nickel, Matauschek, and Dietzel.
A Duet from Haydn’s Creation, sung by Herr and Mlle. Saal.
Herr Ludwig van Beethoven will improvise on the pianoforte.
A new grand symphony with complete orchestra [Op. 21, No. 1], ­composed
by Herr Ludwig van Beethoven.
 Formal elements of instrumental improvisation 15
Paris, Salle des Menus-Plaisirs of the Conservatorio, 23 May 1825
Ouverture [Op. 101] by Hummel;
Les Adieux, ‘nouveau concerto pour le piano (manuscript), composé et ex-
ecuté pour la première fois à Paris par Hummel’;
Air, unidentified, sung by Mlle. Cinti;
Concerto by Kalkbrenner [Op. 61, No. 1] … arranged for harp and played by
Mlle. Celeste Boucher (professor);
Duo sung by Mlle. Cinti and M. Zucchelli;
Rondo brillant in B flat, [Op. 98], composed and played by Hummel;
Quartet by Cherubini [from L’Hôtellerie portugaise], sung by Mlle. Cinti,
MM. Donzelli, Zucchelli, and Levasseur;
Variations for violin, composed and played by M. Baillot;
Improvisation by Hummel.
Frankfurt am Main, 10 August 1840
Fantasia corale;
Hexaméron (with orchestra);
Marcia ungherese;
Mazurka by Chopin;
Improvisation [by Liszt].
Niccolò Paganini was undoubtedly the musician from Beethoven’s time who
succeeded more than any other in astonishing his audiences during concerts
with his ‘diabolical’ virtuosity, his fervid imagination and his unparalleled
abilities in improvisation. His biographer Giancarlo Conestabile wrote
in 1851 that, with reference to the long line of improvisational poets with
whom he was frequently in contact, ‘No less than a Bandettini, a Taddei,
a Sgricci or a Gianni in the realm of poetry, Paganini distinguished him-
self as a musical improviser’ (Conestabile, 1851, p. 47). Once again thanks
to Giancarlo Conestabile’s narration we also learn that on account of the
numerous concerts he was engaged in every week, Paganini as well, much
like Beethoven, was in the habit of thinking out beforehand what he later
improvised, going as far as writing out the part of the second instrument
that he would perform with: ‘he always played a capriccio accompanied by
the pianoforte, for which he had the custom of writing a bass line, imagining
an extemporaneous theme [subbietto] for the violin’ (ibid., p. 46).
The crossover between form and improvisation, understood as the trans-
ferral of syntactic rules to extemporaneously performed pieces, therefore un-
deniably represents one aspect of musical practice in Beethoven’s time. One
should not however overlook the fact that this phenomenon was matched by
its polar opposite, that is to say a non-rigid application of syntactic norms
in composition. This was interpreted as the lack of a distinction between
traditional formal structures used in improvisation and the ‘form’ by which
it was perhaps best represented: the fantasia, which, in the collective imag-
ination, often continued to be understood as a free performance, devoid of
any well-defined formal articulation.
16 Angela Carone
At present, – wrote Ernst Ludwig Gerber in 1817 – one can no longer
perceive either any definite musical forms or any limits to the influence
of the fantasia. Everything goes in all directions but to no fixed destina-
tion; the madder, the better! the wilder and stranger, all the more novel
and effective; this is an endless straining after distant keys and modula-
tions, enharmonic deviations, ear-splitting dissonances and chromatic
progressions, an incessant process and without respite for the listener.
In such a way we hear and play nothing but fantasias. Our sonatas are
fantasias, our overtures are fantasias and even our symphonies, at least
those of Beethoven and his like, are fantasias.9
Between improvisation and formal articulation a dialectical relation there-
fore existed that left ample room for a reciprocal influence; this influence was
so strong that, when it was not possible to discern a formal principle in an
extemporaneous performance, it was compared – not without d ­ isapproval –
to a ‘series of more or less fanciful elaborations, complicated or not, of a
very well-known theme, quite often a popular air’ (Anon., 1828). This judge-
ment was formulated in 1828, and it definitively confirms that, even in the
years immediately following Beethoven’s death, the presence of a clear ar-
ticulation in an improvised piece was as frequent as it was indispensable in
order for it to receive a positive evaluation: the two practices of improvis-
ing and organising musical ideas according to the principles of traditional
forms were anything but irreconcilable.

Notes
Unless otherwise indicated, the English translations are mine.
1 With an opposite intention, that is, of making exact transcriptions of improvisa-
tions, since the 1750s the Fantasy Machine had been constructed. See Richards
(2001, pp. 77 ff.).
2 Carl Czerny, Anekdoten und Notizen über Beethoven [1852] (ms in the Deutsche
Staatsbibliothek, Berlin), cited in Czerny (1963, p. 21).
3 Letter by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to his father, Leopold Mozart, 20 July
1778, cited in Mozart (1962–2006, vol. 2 [1777–79], pp. 409–11, p. 409).
4 Within the category of the prelude, a number of theorists and pianists (including
Carl Czerny and Jan Ladislav Dussek) also counted more elaborate pieces that
involve contrasts in tempos and dynamics. See Woodring Goertzen (1996).
5 This practice was common among singers as well; furthermore, a prelude could
also have been played as a transition between two pieces. See Woodring G ­ oertzen
(1996), and the contribution by Catherine Coppola in this volume, pp. 149–60.
6 This observation was put forward by Ferdinand Ries while describing the ­pianist
Daniel Steibelt. See Wegeler and Ries (1838, p. 81).
7 See the contribution by Jan Philipp Sprick in the present volume.
8 ‘… Moscheless and Hummel played extemporaneously on one piano-forte, and
the applause they received was correspondent to the extraordinary talent of the
two as artist’. The Harmonicon, December 1832, p. 281. This detail is mentioned
by Kroll (2007, p. 201).
9 From a letter sent by Ernst Ludwig Gerber to Jonathan C. H. Rinck, cited in
Richards (2001, p. 199).
 Formal elements of instrumental improvisation 17
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