Empfindsamer Stil (Sensitve style)

        The sensitive style (German: empfindsamer Stil), empfindsam style, or tender style is a style 
of musical composition and poetry developed in 18th-century Germany, intended to express "true 
and natural" feelings, and featuring sudden contrasts of mood.  It was developed as a contrast to the 
Baroque Affektenlehre (lit. "The Doctrine of Affections"), in which a composition (or movement) 
would have the same affect (e.g., emotion or musical mood) throughout.

       The empfindsamer Stil is especially associated with the so-called Berlin School at the Prussian 
court of Frederick the Great (Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a composer there).  Characteristics 
include precise attention to dynamics, as well as the liberal use of appoggiaturas ("sigh" figures) 
and frequent melodic and harmonic chromaticism.


       C.P.E. Bach's piano fantasias are full of dramatic silences, harmonic surprises, and perpetually 
varied figuration.  Slight pauses in phrasing create an intimacy not unlike the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata which is titled Sonata quasi una fantasia ("sonata in the manner of 
a fantasy") and is a direct precursor of Chopin's "fantasy-impromptu."  


       C.P..E. Bach  -  Fantasy in F-sharp minor H. 300 - Anna Tsybuleva, piano  (12:00, play)


        Mozart's piano fantasies Fantasy No. 3 in D minor, K 397 and Fantasy No. 4 in C minor, K 475 and his Adagio in B minor K.540 and his Rondo No. 3 in A minor are examples of the "sensitive style."