and latent power of this fertilising germ.  Discussion of form per se is an impossibility.  This Liszt sonata stands, however, as a bold attempt to modify a form which, as we have seen, Schumann thought exhausted (was it for that reason that Liszt dedicated the work to him?), and one in which so many soulless compositions were written during the second quarter of the present century.  “La sonate,” says Charles Soullier in his Nouveau Dictionnaire de Musique Illustre “est morte avec le dix-huitieme siecle qui en a tant produit.”  Is Liszt’s sonata a Phoenix rising from its ashes?  Shall we be able to say “La sonate est morte!  Vive la sonate!” Time will tell.  Hitherto Liszt’s work has not borne fruit.

CHAPTER X

THE SONATA IN ENGLAND

In previous chapters we have been occupied with Italy and Germany.  Without reference to those countries a history of the pianoforte sonata would be impossible.  Italy was the land of its birth; Germany, that of its growth, and, apparently, highest development.  During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England furnished notable composers for the harpsichord.  William Byrd and Dr. John Bull are not only among the earliest, but at the time in which they flourished, they were the greatest who wrote for a keyboard instrument.  At the beginning of the seventeenth century English music was indeed in a prosperous state; it was admired at home, and its merits were acknowledged abroad.  H. Peacham, in his Compleat Gentleman, published in the reign of James I., says of Byrd:  “For motets and musicke of piety, devotion, as well as for the honour of our nation, as the merit of the man, I preferre above all others our Phoenix, Mr William Byrd, whom in that kind I know not whether any may equall.  I am sure none excell, even by the judgement of France and Italy, who are very sparing in their commendation of strangers, in regard of that conceipt they hold of themselves.  His ‘Cantiones Sacrae,’ as also his ‘Gradualia,’ are mere angelicall and divine; and being of himselfe naturally disposed to gravity and piety his veine is not so much for light madrigals or canzonets; yet his ‘Virginella,’ and some others in his first set, cannot be mended by the first Italian of them all.”  Then at the end of the seventeenth century came Purcell, a genius who seemed likely to raise English music still higher in the estimation of foreign musicians.  But, alas! he departed ere his powers were matured; by his death English art sustained a grievous loss, and from that time declined.  The history of instrumental music during the eighteenth century is dull, and, so far as the pianoforte sonata is concerned, of little or no importance.  Nevertheless, a brief survey of that century will be attempted, after which reference will be made to a few sonata composers of the century now drawing to a close.  Just as we referred to the sonatas for strings and harpsichord before commencing the history of the clavier-sonata proper, so here a few remarks will be made concerning the sonata before Dr. T.A.  Arne—­the first composer, so far as we can trace, who wrote a work of that kind for the harpsichord alone.