I have spent about ten years studying the solo guitar sonatas of Wenzel Thomas Matiegka (or Václav Tomáš Matějka), maybe longer. Of course I have the wonderful edition published by Stanley Yates which I would urge any and all would-be students of the composer’s work go out and get.
In the years I have studied his work I have noticed that
when people discuss his work in music journalism at all there is agreement on
how conventional and conservative his music style was in his time. Let’s take Ralph P Locke’s appreciative
write-up of David Starobin’s final commercial recording as a performing guitarist, Matiegka’s Op. 31 Sonate
progressive:
https://artsfuse.org/253911/listening-during-covid-part-10-so-much-amazing-music-to-discover/
…
You can credit Schubert
for, inadvertently, keeping the name of Wenzel Thomas Matiegka alive to our own
day. Matiegka (1773-1830), born in Bohemia but active primarily in Vienna, was
three years younger than Beethoven and twenty-four years younger than Schubert.
His compositions are modest and conventional, as of course was true of those of
many of Beethoven’s and Schubert’s contemporaries (with the exception of a few,
such as Cherubini, Beethoven’s friend Reicha, and Étienne Nicolas Méhul).
Schubert, to please his employer at the time, outfitted a Matiegka trio for
flute, viola, and guitar (op. 21, entitled Notturno) with an additional part
for cello; the resulting version has had a lively existence in performances and
on recordings, sometimes misleadingly labeled “Schubert: Guitar Quartet.”
…
There are relatively few attempts to describe Matiegka’s
harmonic vocabulary so Locke’s description probably suffices. For those of us
who actually know the music Matiegka did some genuinely weird stuff in his
development sections and codas of his sonatas.
It’s hard to describe the comic whiplash of his getting through his
recapitulation in Op. 31, No. 3 and seeming to nail down his tonic key only to
swerve by way of a C sharp major chord in a first ending back to the start of
his development section in F sharp minor.
It’s a little easier to describe how he prepares a great big dominant
pedal point on E rather than G in Op. 31, No. 1 in C major and begins his
recapitulation in A major; it’s only as he traverses the return of his Theme 1
that he modally mutates from A major to A minor and ends up in C major roughly
in time for what you might think, at first hearing, is really his now
non-modulating transition, his official Theme 1 double-return recapitulation
wrecked by having brought the theme back in an obviously wrong key.
But there’s a reason I mention the gap that can seem to
exist between what people say about Matiegka (conventional and conservative for
his day) and what he actually does that we can observe in his scores.
I mention all that because if there was a cardinal rule in
classical music harmony that was never to be broken it was this, you never go
from the dominant to the subdominant in any key. If you’re in the key of C major and you have just
gotten to your dominant chord (G major) you are never supposed to regress back
to F major. The error goes double, if
you will, if you arrived at your dominant chord by way of a secondary
dominant. Any variation of ii-V-I is the
apotheosis of “classical” harmony. This
is so given that I could give you a blog post by Ethan Hein wherein he
discusses how normative ii-V-I is in conventional classical music harmony
and jazz standards). I could cite Dusan Bogdanovic’s elegantly clear Harmony
for Classical Guitar would say the same thing, we don’t follow the V
with a IV in conventional tonal practice.
But the whole point of my current essay is to point out
that Matiegka made use of a harmonic trope where he has a secondary dominant go
to a dominant which then falls back to the subdominant, either moving back from
that subdominant to another dominant or going through what Robert
Gjerdingen would call a Prinner.
Here. I’ll show what
I mean.
Matiegka, Grand Sonata II, I. Moderato (00:00 to 01:08)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJo-rUgGCqI
The first V7/V to V to IV progression happens from 0:04 to
0:07; the second happens from 0:42 to 0:49 and the third happens from 0:58 to
1:03. There are eight systems on page 1
and the first V7/V to V to IV progression happens within the first six
measures. The second and third cases of
this harmonic pattern occur in systems 6 and the shift from 7 to 8.
So within just the first page of this sonata we have seen and
heard Matiegka use a V7/V to V to IV progression at least three times.
Now I realize what music theorists can do. Someone could say that maybe that D and F# dyad
stands in for a B minor triad. Sure, but
ii is a IV substitute as any first year theory student should probably still be
learning by now. That’s still a flamboyant
harmonic progression and it’s made all the more regressive because the
supertonic triad is not a secondary dominant.
Maybe we could say that the measure that seems to have B minor as the
harmony is part of some dominant ninth chord and such a chord isn’t unheard of
in 1808, sure. But it sounds like
an obvious and overt V to IV progression.
Even If we try to explain away this harmony as not really a IV chord
because the next chord is a dominant we’ve still go the two next examples to
consider. On the whole I’d say there’s
no getting around Matiegka using an obvious harmonic regression after his first
big half-cadence that he’s prepared with
a secondary
dominant.
Okay, so how about the passage in the sixth system? At this point I’d say we’re in a modulating
transition but Matiegka has a penchant for starting his transitions in his new
key and finding ways to reinforce it a few times before introducing his new
theme. If you want a discussion of Grand
Sonata I I have done that previously. Here Matiegka begins his transition by
seeming to return to his initial idea and then he follows up his big V7/V to V
progression with a continuation on E major.
This, it turns out, becomes the new key but he spends
nearly two thirds of a page affirming that key before he introduces his Theme
2. Along the way we’ll see he has a
couple of V7/V to V to IV progressions across systems six through eight. From 0:46 to 0:52 we see him move from F#7 to
B to … A major? No, let’s call it F#
minor because of the fact that there are no E’s in the harmony.
Then again, what do we make of what seems like a really
obvious Prinner. Matiegka has moving across these systems? What’s a Prinner? In Gjerdingen’s Prinner schema the upper voice
has scale degrees 6, 5, 4 and 3 while the lower voice runs down 4, 3, 2 and
then 1 of the scale. Famous examples of
this schema in popular song show up in Aretha Franklin’s performance of “Natural
Woman” and at the end of major sections of “Let it Be” by the Beatles.
Something to keep in mind about Robert Gjerdingen’s work on
galant schemas is that they can elapse over a fairly long period of time, even
entire phrases. That means that the kind
of melodic/harmonic schema that elapses in mere seconds in a song performed by
Franklin or The Beatles could be stretched out across four whole measures in the
transitions of a Matiegka guitar sonata.
What is important about the Prinner as a schema is the linear movement
and not necessarily every little detail on the second half of the weakest beats
of a measure. If we keep that crucial
rhythmic and metrical element in mind then it seems pretty obvious Matiegka
follows up his V7/V and V chord progressions with Prinners.
So that he did this seems obvious and as for why
… alert listeners would sense the obvious harmonic regressions and so the
question of whether or not the composer would “fix” this harmonic bad habit
could be a question that runs through the first movement. On the other hand, it could telegraph that
something similarly odd might be coming up in a later movement, ,such as
recapitulating half of the first theme of his slow sonata middle movement in the
subdominant key but we’re not talking about the entirety of Grand Sonata II
in this essay. I think the most prosaic
explanation makes the most sense, he liked the Prinner gesture and it had the
great advantage of letting him move from B7 to E down to an open A string. Why not use that note if it’s right
there? Prinners can create tonal closure
within keys, after all, and so a series of Prinners after a strong half cadence,
however regressive, will reinforce E major as the new key awaiting an actually
new, clearly identifiable theme. That
doesn’t come until later.
For this particular essay I am simply making a point that
V-IV progressions showed up three times on page 1 of a big guitar sonata. For all of us who were music theory students
who heard that the V never goes to the IV, well, The Mighty Monarch might
declare that this bromide turned out to be nothing but lies and also lies. Clearly a big guitar sonata by one of the
most highly regarded guitarist composers in Vienna in the first decade of the
19th century got away with a few V-IV progressions. It isn’t even the only sonata in which he
used the progression.
Remember that passage that described Matiegka’s harmonic
language as fairly conventional or conservative for its day? Keep that in mind. If Matiegka’s musical language was so normal
then we have to explain how and why so many V7/V to V to IV progressions showed
up in the first first page of this 12-age three movement guitar sonata
published by Artaria in 1808. Didn’t all
those engravers and proofreaders know that this was breaking one of the biggest
rules in classical harmony? Was this
Bohemian guitarist just going to get away with it? Obviously he did because here we are two
centuries later looking at this sonata and seeing three V to IV shifts before
the composer has even gotten to the second theme in his sonata exposition.
This brings us to the composer’s self-published Op. 31, Sonate
progressive, six little three-movement guitar sonatas in C major, A minor,
G major, E minor, D major and B minor. Sonata
No. 3 in G major features still more passages in which V7/V goes to V and is
followed up by IV and it’s even more impossible to dispute than the cases we
examined in Grand Sonata II.
Unfortunately, Op. 31 No. 3 in G major does not currently
exist in a public domain form that’s easily accessible. I can share a link to a performance of the
Matiegka work.
Matiegka Sonate progressive Op. 31, No. 3. I. Allegro
moderato
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uhpa99nxTk
Hearing is believing but seeing a score is even
better. What I “can” do, because I am
myself a guitarist and a hobbyist composer, is dramatically recompose Matiegka’s
Op. 31 No. 3 sonata exposition while retaining the basic harmonies and melodic
gestures. Being the ragtime fan that I
am I’m just going to reconceive of Matiegka’s cheerful, plucky little sonata as
a ragtime idea.
As we heard, and now can see, Matiegka has yet another
obvious case of a secondary dominant going to a dominant which is then followed
up by a subdominant. His Theme 1 doesn’t
even end on a tonic! Instead he ends on
a half cadence which spins out, after a brief tonic rest, into a rather awkward
half-cadence that sets up an arrival at D major. Given how much of Haydn fan Matiegka was I would venture to
suggest this awkward modulation was probably chosen for comic effect, it’s too
fast and too awkward and it would certainly make a listener realize that abrupt
and not always “convincing” modulations were going to be a thing in this
sonata.
But as this essay is about just Matiegka’s use of the V-IV
progression I am not going to rabbit trail into larger intra-movement and
inter-movement patterns. It’s enough to
demonstrate that this Bohemian guitarist composer made no less than half a
dozen uses of the V7/V to V to IV progression which is what you probably heard
in some theory courses is exactly the kind of regressive harmony you’re never supposed
to do. I know I heard it.
But guess what? Matiegka obviously didn’t
care about that and neither did all of the people working at Artaria who published
Grand Sonata II back in 1808.
Now I know that in blues a V-IV turnaround is a trope, and
a trope that works great in Robert Johnson’s “Kind-Hearted
Woman Blues” To invoke Richard
Taruskin, I don’t intend to have some race to the patent office claim that
Matiegka did the V to IV change back in 1808 whereas Johnson didn’t get around
to it until more than a century later because my real point is that guitarists
don’t have to much wonder why guitarists would find it easy and pleasing to
just drop down two frets and keep the same basic chord shape. Whether the virtuoso guitarist was Wenzel
Matiegka or Robert Johnson they both decided the fun thing to do would be to
have the V followed up by a IV because that chord change sounded good to them.
I’m saying that it is obvious from Matiegka’s work that
even if this progression was not normative within his work (and it really isn’t)
he clearly felt at liberty to use it profusely when he liked how it
sounded.
Why does this matter?
I have argued that we guitarists should “cross
over instead” when it comes to popular music and the reception of the
guitar within the classical music world. The guitarist and music publisher
Matanya Ophee used to say that the guitar was not treated as a serious instrument
among classical music’s mainstream. We
should not, he urged us, have an inferiority complex about the guitar or its
music but should show that we have contributions to make. I agree.
His admonition that guitarists tended to cross over instead of finding
mainstream success in classical music has gotten me thinking …
If, after so many centuries, no guitar music has made it
into the proverbial Western canon then of what use is it for we guitarists to
try to make music that will be considered as “serious” as the music of Bach or
Beethoven? I am ambivalent about the
advice that guitarists go out and attempt to be taken seriously by other
classical musicians. It would be nice if
that could happen but for so long as advocates of classical music keep acting
as if their better taste makes them better people I’m going to say “no”. This was one of the central points Richard
Taruskin kept coming back to across his whole career, those of us who genuinely
love classical music are not and have never been “better people” for having
that love and we should stop acting as if it were the case.
Furthermore, I have discovered after a lifetime of
burrowing into the classical guitar literature that when it comes to stuff as
rudimentary as whether your V chord goes to a IV chord Robert Johnson and
Wenzel Matiegka have something in common that goes into the tips of their fingers.
We guitarists would be fools to not consider what that
could tell us about the beautiful heritage of our instrument. It’s not just in the morphology of how we
even play, it comes through in music in different styles across two continents
over two different centuries, the V chord can go to the IV chord and that’s
fine. Don’t overplay your riff’s
welcome, but Matiegka’s sonatas show that even back in 1808 and 1811 nobody
really raised a cry that he was breaking some truly inviolable rule. It’s been true for centuries that if going
from V to IV sounds good you do that.
You can ask Wenzel Matiegka that by way of going through his scores. I’ve
shown that using V7/V to V to IV was something he did multiple times.
The implications of this seem obvious, a path toward an approach to sonata forms that takes the vocabulary of blues seriously on its own terms is possible and desirable (and has probably already been done but it wouldn't surprise me if theorists have argued about it, if this is so). If anyone claims that it isn’t possible because you never go from a V to a IV chord in “real” classical music I’ve just disproven that point repeatedly by looking at just two solo guitar sonatas by one Bohemian guitarist composer who was published two centuries ago. It's the simplest thing in the world to have a V-IV turnaround in E minor blues go from the tonic to the subtonic and thereby have a 12-bar blues theme serve as the basis for a continuous variation form that checks off all the structural points of a "textbook" sonata form. Here is a potential outworking of such an observation, for what it's worth, and if we're looking at strictly monothematic sonata forms a further implication is that development sections can be written in such a way that a seasoned guitarist could create entirely new development sections over an established bass line as if the score were a partimento, jazz chart or figured bass passage.
We have all the conceptual and theoretical tools we need to create blues sonatas and we have a precedent in the music of composers like Matiegka to see that the V-IV progression could be normative in his musical language which, as we've seen, has been described as conservative and moderately conventional. Okay, then, if that's the case then all the possibilities for a synthesis of blues and ragtime with 18th century forms is practical. Akaba is right over there, it's simply a matter of going.
The classical purists and the blues purists, I dare to say it, can both be wrong. Music theorists, historians and journalists understandably find styles and eras they love and advocate for them but the more I study music, listen to it, play it and write it, the more I am struck by how the people who have the most to gain by segregating every genre into firmly delineated boundaries that are allegedly impermeable are the people with textbooks to sell and this is as true of blues and jazz and rock fans as of classical music fans and fans of “serious” music. We don’t have to be constrained by those people and their lack of imagination. In order to find out if we have points of contact and boundary-permeable musical phenomena we have to immerse ourselves in music, sometimes that will require us to consider that the bromides and canards of music theorists and historians get disproven by the actual notes on the page.
If I had confined myself to just studying the music most of the classical guitar community considered "worthy" of studying I wouldn't have spent ten years going through Matiegka's guitar sonatas and I would not have discovered how often he used the V7/V to V to IV progression in his work. It's not a lot of instances, really, but as I've been saying the implications of how that usage could and should make us rethink what has been taught in textbooks about what actually "never" happens or "isn't good practice" should at least come up for some appraisal.
