Empfindsamkeit (Ger.

)
Daniel Heartz, revised by Bruce Alan Brown

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.08774
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

A musical aesthetic associated with north Germany during the middle of the 18th
century, and embodied in what was called the ‘Empfindsamer Stil’. Its aims were
to achieve an intimate, sensitive and subjective expression; gentle tears of
melancholy were one of its most desired responses. The term is usually translated
as ‘sensibility’ (in the 18th-century or Jane Austen sense, which derives from the
French sensibilité). ‘Sentimental’ is another translation, sanctioned by Lessing
when rendering Sterne’s Sentimental Journey as Empfindsame Reise. One modern
scholar, W.S. Newman, gives ‘ultrasensitive’ as an English equivalent.

German ‘Empfindsamkeit’ was part of a wider European literary and aesthetic

phenomenon, largely British in origin (e.g. Shaftesbury’s cult of feeling, and
Richardson’s novel Pamela, 1741), which posited immediacy of emotional response
as a surer guide than intellect to proper moral behaviour. C.P.E. Bach (henceforth
called simply Bach), who was close to Lessing and other progressive literary
figures, best embodied the ideals of ‘Empfindsamkeit’ with respect to music. In his
Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (1753) he stated that music’s
main aims were to touch the heart and move the affections; to do this he specified
that it was necessary to play from the soul (‘aus der Seele’). The style of music he
chose was often indistinguishable from the international idiom of finely nuanced,
periodic melody, supported by light-textured accompaniment: it was a reaction to
the ‘strict’ or ‘learned’ style and elsewhere was apt to go under the name ‘galant’.
A main difference was that the north Germans tended to avoid lavish decoration:
both Bach and Quantz cautioned against the over-use of embellishments. Before
them, Marpurg had written approvingly of the Berlin school, saying ‘The
performances of the Grauns, Quantz, Bach, et al., are never characterized by
masses of embellishments; impressive, rhetorical and moving qualities spring
from entirely different things, which do not create as much stir, but touch the
heart the more directly’. The most easily identifiable ‘rhetorical’ device was
instrumental recitative. It evolved in imitation of the elaborate or obbligato
recitative in opera seria, of which Hasse and his circle at Dresden were the most
admired exponents in Germany. Bach provided a fine example in his ‘Prussian’
Sonatas, written in 1740. The so-called ‘redende Prinzip’ of Bach departs from
recitative, but goes far beyond it in his keyboard and chamber music, for example,
in the trio representing a ‘Dialogue between a Sanguinary and a
Melancolic’ (1749). Another fundamental element in Bach’s style, related to
recitative by its freedom of rhythm, was the rhapsodic manner of the keyboard
fantasy, as evolved by Frescobaldi and Froberger, kept alive by German organists,
and passed on by Bach’s father. While Bach’s friends increasingly saw the need to
make explicit by words or programme the rhapsodic and ‘speaking’ elements in

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 his music (e.g. Gerstenberg’s fitting of Hamlet’s monologue to the music of the
final Probestück accompanying the Versuch), Bach himself held back from
verbalization.

In literature the most influential model of ‘Empfindsamkeit’ was provided by

Klopstock’s Messias (1748), a redefinition of the epic in which internal, subjective
events predominate and the external drama exists only as a point of reference.
The poet Ramler wrote the Passion cantata Der Tod Jesu in imitation of Klopstock.
As set by C.H. Graun in 1755, it immediately became the most central and
successful monument of musical ‘Empfindsamkeit’. The drama is expressed mostly
through the reflections and emotions of anonymous devouts, who use the present
tense. Their musical speech is fashionably modern, relying on the aria types as
well as the obbligato recitative of opera seria, of which Graun was the most
important German master, after Hasse. His setting of ‘Gethsemane!’ (ex.1) shows
this conjunction of sentimental meditation and theatrical musical language. The
plethora of melodic sighs, the augmented 6th chord with Phrygian cadence for
questions, the iterated quavers or semiquavers to express trembling, are all
operatic clichés; more individual and expressive are the choice of darker flat keys
and the easy enharmonic manoeuvring.

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 Ex.1 from Graun: Der Tod Jesu

A critic writing in Cramer’s Magazin der Musik in 1783 (i/2, p.1352) still preferred
Graun’s Der Tod Jesu to a more recent setting, saying that ‘Gethsemane!
Gethsemane!’ ‘brought one to tears because of its touching, heart-rending
feeling’. Yet, even very early, voices were raised against the sentimentality that
made Graun so popular. In the article ‘Oratorio’ for his Allgemeine Theorie der
schönen Künste (1771–4), Sulzer, writing with advice from J.P. Kirnberger and
J.A.P. Schulz, took exception to Der Tod Jesu, saying ‘most arias are not
differentiated enough from opera arias; precisely this softness and the
exaggerated, almost voluptuous polish of the melodies, and in some places even
playfulness kill the feeling [Empfindung]’. In the same way Lessing, the man who
founded sentimental, bourgeois tragedy in Germany, ironically condemned
Klopstock’s lyrics, saying that they were ‘so voller Empfindung, dass man oft gar
nichts dabey empfindet’ (Sämtliche Schriften, iii, Brief 51). Schiller took a similar
line when surreptitiously reviewing his own play, Die Räuber (1782), and saying
that its incredibly sentimental heroine ‘has read too much Klopstock’. Goethe
pronounced judgment on the movement when, looking back at his Werther, he
admitted its sentimentality was indebted to Sterne, and concluded ‘there arose a
kind of tender–passionate aesthetic which, because the humorous irony of the
British was not given to us, usually had to degenerate into a sorry self-torment’.

Writing generally of ‘Musik’ in his encyclopedia, Sulzer put a finer point on the
relationship of modern German style to the galant idiom: ‘that music in recent
times has the nice and very supple genius and fine sensibility [Empfindsamkeit] of
the Italians to thank is beyond doubt. But also most of what has spoilt the true
taste has also come out of Italy, particularly the dominance of melodies that say
nothing and merely tickle the ear’. Schulz, who contributed music articles from
the letter S onwards, spelt out this criticism further: ‘The sonatas of the present-
day Italians are characterized by a bustle of sounds succeeding each other
arbitrarily without any other purpose than to gratify the insensitive ears of the
layman’ (article ‘Sonata’). In order to give an example of music that went beyond
such lowly aims, Schulz resorted to the keyboard sonatas of Bach, praising them
because ‘they are so communicative [sprechend] that one believes oneself to be
perceiving not tones but a distinct speech, which sets and keeps in motion our
imagination and feelings [Empfindungen]’. Bach’s own remarks about the
difference between his art and that of the modern Italians (among whom he
included Schobert and his younger brother, Johann Christian) are in a letter of
1768: ‘Their music falls upon the ear and fills it up, but leaves the heart empty; in
Italy now, as Galuppi himself told me, the mode no longer tolerates Adagios, but
only noisy Allegros, or at most an Andantino’. The implication that Galuppi,
greatest master of the galant keyboard idiom in Italy and a personal friend of
Bach’s, was in sympathy with his ideals, lends further credence to the existence of

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 a galant-‘empfindsam’ symbiosis; another implication is that the aesthetic ideals of
the mid-century were yielding ground by about 1770 to a showier and stormier
phase, so-called ‘Sturm und Drang’.

Some historians have posited ‘Empfindsamkeit’ as a musical parallel to ‘Sturm

und Drang’. The dramatic fluidity sought by both encourages such a parallel. Bach
wrote that he wanted to express many affects, closely following upon one another;
and emphasis upon a fluid, transitional discourse, ranging quickly from one
emotion to another, can be found in many of his pieces. Yet the intimate, almost
private, aspect of Bach’s art represents a quality that helps define
‘Empfindsamkeit’ and set it apart as a parallel phenomenon, one that anticipates
and runs alongside the more popular appeal of ‘Sturm und Drang’. Bach’s
favourite instrument was the clavichord. The boundaries of his artistic world and
the ideals of his generation were not such as could embrace all the revolutionary
visions of young Herder, Goethe and Schiller. The difference was more of degree
than of kind. Even as late as about 1785 Schubart, a typical ‘Stürmer’, wrote in
the Ideen praising the clavichord as the ‘empfindsame’ instrument par excellence,
calling it ‘this lonely, melancholy, inexpressively sweet instrument … whoever does
not prefer to bluster, rage and storm, whose heart overflows often and readily in
sweet feelings, he passes by the harpsichord and the piano and chooses – a
clavichord’. Bach, unlike his friend Benda, drew back from melodrama, and even
resisted attempts made by literary friends like Gerstenberg to set texts under his
fantasies. They may be easily enrolled under the banner of Sturm und Drang; by
his caution, his reluctance to indulge in theatrics beyond the scope of his
keyboard, Bach may not.

See also Classical; Enlightenment; Galant; Rococo; Sturm und Drang.

Bibliography
MGG2 (W. Hirschmann)

NewmanSCE

J.H. Campe: ‘Von der nöthigen Sorge für die Erhaltung des Gleichgewichts
unter den menschlichen Kräften. Besondere Warnung vor dem Modefehler
die Empfindsamkeit zu überspannen’, Allgemeine Revision des gesammten
Schul- und Erziehungswesens (Hamburg, 1785)

C.F.D. Schubart: Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Vienna, 1806/R)

E.F. Schmid: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach und seine Kammermusik (Kassel,
1931)

A. Schering: ‘Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach und das “redende Prinzip” in der
Musik’, JbMP 1938, 13–29

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 H.H. Eggebrecht: ‘Das Ausdrucksprinzip im musikalische Sturm und Drang’,
Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift für Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte, 29 (1955),
323–49

L. Hoffmann-Erbrecht: ‘Sturm und Drang in der deutschen Klaviermusik von

1753–1763’, Mf, 10 (1957), 466–79

W.J. Mitchell, ed. and trans.: Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard
Instruments by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (New York, 1959)

R. Wyler: Form- und Stiluntersuchungen zum ersten Satz der Klaviersonaten

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bachs (Biel, 1960)

P. Barford: The Keyboard Music of C.P.E. Bach (London, 1965)

W.S. Newman: ‘Emanuel Bach’s Autobiography’, MQ, 51 (1965), 363–72

G. Kaiser: Von der Aufklärung bis zum Sturm und Drang (Gutersloh, 1966,
3/1979 as Aufklärung, Empfindsamkeit, Sturm und Drang)

F.R. Bosonnet: ‘Die Bedeutung des Begriffs “Empfindsamkeit” für die

deutsche Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts’, GfMKB: Bonn 1970, 352–5

E. Helm: ‘The “Hamlet” Fantasy and the Literary Element in C.P.E. Bach’s
Music’, MQ, 58 (1972), 277–96

G. Sauder: Empfindsamkeit, i: Voraussetzungen und Elemente (Stuttgart,

1974); ii: Quellen und Dokumente (Stuttgart, 1980)

U. Karthaus, ed.: Sturm und Drang und Empfindsamkeit (Stuttgart, 1976)

P. Hohendahl: Der europäische Roman der Empfindsamkeit (Wiesbaden,

1977)
See also

Romanticism, §1: History of usage

Galant

Sturm und Drang

Classical

Enlightenment

Rococo

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